Teach breastfeeding at school, experts say. What's your thoughts?

[LoveLivesHere]

National News

Teach breastfeeding at school, experts say



SCHOOLCHILDREN should be taught the benefits of breastfeeding to help drive a major change in society's attitude towards feeding babies, leading experts say.

Dr Jennifer James, a senior lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne, and British expert Professor Mary Renfrew believe a cultural shift is needed to encourage more women to breastfeed.
Only 14 per cent of Australian mums and one per cent of British mums exclusively breastfeed their babies until they are six months, in line with World Health Organisation guidelines.
Dr James and Prof Renfrew argue that because feeding babies formula milk is so common, breastfeeding has become a contentious issue, despite a raft of scientific studies showing the health benefits of breast milk for babies and mums.
They say governments, schools and health professionals all have a role to play to help increase breastfeeding rates.
"We should be talking to kids as they're going through school about the science, the biology, what is it about breast milk that makes it unique, why it's important for babies to breastfeed," Dr James said.
"It should be part of the curriculum and it should start from prep school.
"Children who go to preschool or kindergarten often have younger siblings that have been breastfeed.
"So getting them from that age continuing on from seeing a sibling breastfeed and keeping it going right through school reinforces that when you have a baby you breastfeed."
Prof Renfrew, director of the mother and infant research unit at the University of York, said society had lost confidence in breastfeeding partly because people through the 20th century believed formula was as good as or better than breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding women also often lacked family support because female relatives had reared babies on formula while many health professionals, particularly doctors, had not received proper education about breastfeeding since the 1940s.
Prof Renfrew said a recent UK study found that when children in their first year of primary school were asked to draw pictures of feeding babies, most drew bottles.
"The messages are prevalent throughout society so we actually have to start very young and assume that breastfeeding is what happens to babies and bottles are what happen if you have a problem and you need some sort of medicine," she said.
As well as educating children, Prof Renfrew said national plans were needed to teach health professionals, women and their families about the benefits of breastfeeding, including lowering the chances of illness for babies and breast cancer in mums.
"If you trace the root of this right back it ends up always in the same place which is people don't believe it matters or they don't believe it matters enough," she said.
"They absolutely don't understand the differences it makes to babies."
Prof Renfrew said she believed the messages about the benefits of breastfeeding were starting to get through in Britain, where the number of new mums who tried breastfeeding had risen to 82 per cent.
"If we can plug in a number of things and try and tackle these probs it will shift over time," she said.
Prof Renfrew and Dr James' comments came as they prepared to address the Australian Breastfeeding Association's international conference in Canberra.






Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/teac...#ixzz1bSYJqUnq

[share a book]

I fully s upport it but what I really want to s ee is baby care in s chools like it was before. Not with one of thos e babies but real actual baby care like back in the 70'ss /80'

[LoveLivesHere]

I must admit this bit shocked me.

Only 14 per cent of Australian mums and one per cent of British mums exclusively breastfeed their babies until they are six months, in line with World Health Organisation guidelines.

I thought our rates were much higher than that.


But this didn't

Prof Renfrew said a recent UK study found that when children in their first year of primary school were asked to draw pictures of feeding babies, most drew bottles.

This is where I as a mum have failed. If my kids asked me to draw a baby feeding, i have always drawn a bottle feeding baby. Even though I breastfed 5 children and plan to breastfed my 6th.



Anyhow what are your thoughts.....


PLEASE, don't turn this into a breast against bottle thread.

[bressar]

I think this is a great idea.
Breastfeeding needs to be seen as the norm. I was shocked at most peoples attitudes on finding out i was breastfeeding past 12 months. Very negative and/ or just no idea of the benefits.
In saying that i think they would need to make sure that formula feeding isnt made out to be a terrible thing!

[haveheart]

I think this is a great idea.
Breastfeeding needs to be seen as the norm. I was shocked at most peoples attitudes on finding out i was breastfeeding past 12 months. Very negative and/ or just no idea of the benefits.
In saying that i think they would need to make sure that formula feeding isnt made out to be a terrible thing!

Totally agree with this ^^

[duckduckgoose]

I think it's a great idea.

[BigRedV]

I think it's a good idea in theory to educate children about breastfeeding, but I don't know how feasible it would be as the curriculum is already overloaded. There are not enough hours in the day to teach what we need to teach now and often things like music, art or craft, dance etc. are omitted because there is so much focus on literacy and numeracy (blame NAPLAN and myschool)

[CakeyLoaf]

What a good idea. I grew up in the UK and I must say it's very rare to see a bf mother. It's a part if nature, to lactate so I don't see why it isn't already mentioned in textbooks. To be honest though I think when we get into adulthood most of us are aware of the benefits of bf. It's not a bad thing at all for kids to be shown that it's natural to bf etc.

Not sure why the op thought it would turn into a bf vs ff. debate though? Ps I'm a ff. but I'm not ignorant to the benefits of breast milk.

[LoveLivesHere]

I have breastfed in the schoolyard constantly with my last bub. I had a 45 min wait from the first child get out and last child getting out. So i would just feed sitting at the seats in the playground. I must admit not once did i get a negative comment about feeding him even when he was a toddler. So I hope attitudes are already changing.

[Guest]

I never thought about how a baby was fed or cared in school. I had my first baby at 30 and wouldn't have remembered. Why is everything kids are taught expected to be at school, why not educate new mums/mums to be first, and in turn you teach your own kids. My son already knows what my boobs are for and he's 2, if we saw a breastfeeding mother in public when they're older I'd explain to them what she's doing and why.
I don't see the issue and would rather my kids spend that time on more important subjects at school.