Awful New Campaign Shames Mothers For Eating Junk Food While Breastfeeding Because Nothing You Do Will Ever Be Good Enough
(Photo: Facebook/Pediatrica Sprs)
People love nothing more than policing the consumption habits of pregnant women, but if you thought that delivering the baby would give you a reprieve from judgmental backseat drivers watching your sodium and soda and sugar and fat intake from over your shoulder, think again. A new ad campaign from the Pediatric Society of Rio Grande has set out to shame mothers with images of babies nursing from breasts painted with images of large colas, doughnuts, and fast-food hamburgers.
“Your child is what you eat,” the ad copy says. Huh. My child seems pretty healthy for being three gallons of Starbucks Caffe Mocha in a baby-shaped container.
According Yahoo Parenting, the Pediatric Society of Rio Grande intends the messages to convey important messages about diet and nutrition, which would be useful information to give out. But the message is lost and all that actually comes out is another way of shaming breastfeeding mothers for eating something besides wild salmon, spinach, and quinoa while breastfeeding.
”It’s mean and awful,” La Leche spokeswoman Diana West said. ”It promotes the idea that you have to have a perfect diet to breastfeed. If women think that their milk isn’t ”˜good enough, they won’t bother breastfeeding at all. It’ll also make them worry that they’re not ”˜perfect’ moms. Shaming like this is horrifying.”
It is also total baloney. Women who choose to breastfeed and are able to do so don’t have to worry about having some pizza or a hamburger, or for pure Coca Cola to come spraying out of their nipples. Mammary glands are pretty good at making food for babies. You don’t have to have a diet like Gwyneth Paltrow to make good milk.
(Photo: Facebook/Pediatrica Sprs)
Not only are the ads incorrect and shaming to mothers, they seem ineffective as well, because this one is really making me want a hamburger right now. Just look at that bacon and that runny cheese. I bet if my infant could talk, she would say she wants a hamburger too.
