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NEW REVIEW OF THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS In The Journal of Human Lactation, August 2003, Vol 19, Number
3. This small volume began life as a concise fact sheet about the value of the work of breastfeeding and grew into a book for the International Labour Organization Conference in June 2000. This expanded edition, for use by individual women, NGOs, governments, trade unions, and international agencies, attempts to quantify and value economically and socially, the caring work of breastfeeding. Despite being a high frequency, non-postponable multitask, breastfeeding is neglected and uncounted as skilled, productive work and may conflict with a mother's much-needed income from waged work. Once all the available monetary measurements and estimates are brought together, we glimpse the truly immense value of unpaid work that has been unappreciated, downgraded, and devalued and the loss suffered with the catastrophic decline in breastfeeding, with only 1 in 3 babies around the globe fully breastfed. Written in an easy style peppered with startling, referenced statements about who provides funding to whom, this book outlines, in a way at the same time shocking and inspiring, how breastfeeding is being marginalized on a global scale. Chapters celebrate the value of breastfeeding as caring work and mother's milk as a valuable commodity that only women can provide, before going on to describe the distortion of information and dollars spent to undermine both. Particular attention is paid to the threat to breastfeeding posed by the AIDS industry and how vested interest shape research. Concerns range from the deadly consequences of public-private partnerships to the way informed choice is manipulated to cause a decline in breastfeeding worldwide. While offering few concrete solutions that can be employed by individual women, this book makes the case that women's work of producing milk and feeding it to babies should be valued and supported as central to the kindness we are owed as human beings in our first precious years of life. It deserves a place in the libraries of all working to elevate the status of women. Mothers, LCs, lactivists, and others who become discouraged by the day-to-day obstacles will find within these pages affirmation of their efforts and inspiration to carry on. Pamela Morrison, IBCLC Price per copy: £8.50/$14.95 paperback + 15%p&p (less 25% for six or more copies). The Milk of Human Kindness can be bought online. Go to www.allwomencount.net/Publications/MHKOrderForm.htm Or by post - send orders and cheques to Crossroads Books: In pounds sterling to: in US dollars to: |