Speaking as a mother of 10, I would like to point out that breastfeeding is a lot cheaper and more convenient than bottle-feeding. At the most difficult times, I would say to myself, “Remember, it’s free.”

This is a welcome article as far as i’m concerned. It’s also topical, since my daughter is currently breastfeeding, including discreetly in restaurants. No-one bats an eyelid: the most natural and nurturing thing in the world.

The author could have mentioned the idiocy around the term “chestfeeding” but resisted the temptation. She made enough pretty salient points around both female and male perceptions and attitudes to womanhood without needing to venture into the trans debate.

She’s also right about patriarchal expressions of inadequacy around bringing forth life into the world; feeling the need to act like “gods” to compensate. Indeed.

I have never read a male version of something like this. A man going about how his ability to gain an erection (some men are impotent!) or grow a beard (not all men can grow beards!) is somehow spiritual or life affirming. What it is like to implant your seed in someone else and watch her belly grow. The radical act of walking down the street with a hidden erection. The torment of wet dreams! Let’s talk about the sensuality of the male form…
Do men just go through life accepting of their bodies or what? Are they disconnected to them? Do they read articles like this and think women must come from another planet, or do they wish there were more similar articles about the male body and the sense of self in relation to it?

Just one small quibble…
The author writes: “an understanding of ourselves as the sex class with the capacity to create life.”
Simply put, women are the “sex class” that gestates a baby (life), but they do not create it. Only a man and woman together can create life.
A small point but an important one I think.

This poor woman has spent her entire life worrying about what other people thnk or write.

At risk of being pedantic about biology, but women cannot create life. Very hard to do absent male, uh, input. Grow life after the deed is done though, undoubtedly aces at that.

How sad and disconnected that women (notably here in France) are presented with the choice of breast feeding or not before leaving hospital as if it is merely their lifestyle choice and nothing to do with biology, immunology, the baby’s and mother’s needs. My young neighbour told me she would have liked to breast feed at least for a few weeks before the need to return to work imposed but it was all or nothing for the milk suppression drugs protocol!
No fault ascribed of course to those (a tiny minority) who try but can’t breastfeed, though another neighbour told me she might have done better with more support.

I’m so angry that I could write a book about Smith’s point of view in this article. In fact, I have. Not in one book but in four. And each of them has “misandry” in the title, although Katherine Young and I studied not only misandry but also its gynocentric matrix (ideological feminism). I think that Smith argues, ultimately, in favor of female essentialism. But I’m not sure, because she argues against it, too, throughout her article. On the rhetorical level, it looks as if she wants to have her proverbial cake and eat it, too.

(1) “If it looks as though mothers are being shamed, that’s because they are. At a time when feminists fight to articulate why femaleness matters, stories such as this back up the idea that any appreciation for female bodies will be used against us … Yet the men who would write us off, won’t change their minds. Look at the treatment of any woman who pushes back, even in the mildest way, against the idea that femaleness is socially and politically irrelevant. How quickly her status crumbles; how soon she’ll be told she’s a biological essentialist who thinks all women are baby making machines. ”
Well, precisely who is doing all of this shaming? Not men but women–that is, women whose egalitarian version of feminism relies on the fantasy that men and women are interchangeable except for gestation and lactation (and who sometimes argue that technologies should simulate even those natural functions). Oh, and then there are those women whose essentialist version of feminism (a recent and radical reaction against the liberal ethos of egalitarian feminism) makes the opposite argument. Would Smith have us believe that all of these women are merely innocent victims of misogynistic men? If so, I’m not buying it. Both femaleness and maleness do indeed matter, but they do so because humans are physiologically and psychologically interdependent, not polarized.

(2) “How can you value something only a woman’s body can do without suggesting this is what all women should do?”
Okay, that’s a good question. But why ask it only about what female bodies can do? Countless people to this day value male bodies for their muscular strength and mobility, which is why they suggest–no, insist with the force of law and supposedly with the authority of evolutionary psychology–that men per se are “expendable” in war. I argue against that claim, but my point right here is only that Smith ignores this male counterpart of female reductionism and thus succumbs to the hypocrisy of a double standard.

(3) “When we strip it away from narratives of duty, breastfeeding is not at all feminine. Nothing to do with femaleness — actual femaleness — really is. To be honest, I often found it comical.”
Okay, so there’s nothing innately female that allows women to make any contribution to the family or society that is (a) distinctive, (b) necessary or (c) publicly valued. How, then, is it possible for women to have a healthy identity specifically as women? And, as you all know from some of other comments, I ask the same question about maleness and men. But women, so far, still have some advantages over men. Even though many people now claim that motherhood and fatherhood are interchangeable, falsely in my opinion, few people even now try to legitimate that claim by implying that mothers really amounts to assistant fathers and are therefore luxuries at best in family life. Few people want the law to favor divorced fathers, moreover, instead of divorced mothers (although a growing number do advocate joint custody). Few people would argue that fathers should have an equal say–or any say at all–in the fate of fetuses (although many people, including legislators, argue that birth certificates need not include the names of fathers).

(4) “I don’t miss feeling my body was not my own … ”
Maybe not, but many women insist that their fetuses really are extensions of their own bodies. Otherwise, how could they argue for abortion on demand by claiming the right to do whatever they like with their own bodies?

(5) “We would rather deny the specificity of our embodied relationship with our own children than risk being written off as some mindless blob of reproductive matter.”
Here, Smith recoils from the association between a mother and a “mindless blob of reproductive matter.” From this premise, it would make sense to approve of abortion on demand (the fetus, too, presumably being a mindless blob of reproductive matter). But elsewhere Smith argues for the uniquely positive association of women with gestation.

(6) “Women are terrorised out of appreciating the magic of our own bodies — we’re terrorised out of using words such as “magic” — by the constant threat of dehumanisation.”
Here, and elsewhere, Smith goes into reverse by advocating female essentialism–which is her main argument in this article. What would she say, however, about men appreciating the “magic” of male bodies? And this motif is, in fact, common both historically (obviously in art history) and cross-culturally. Would she ascribe it to androcentric neuroticism? To overt or covert homoeroticism? To misogynistic hostility (or indifference) toward female bodies? She doesn’t bother even to ask these questions. In the same paragraph, though, she continues as follows:

(7) “Women are terrorised out of appreciating the magic of our own bodies — we’re terrorised out of using words such as “magic” — by the constant threat of dehumanisation.”
Smith returns here to the argument against essentialism: the reduction of women either to their messy natural functions (a theme that Camille Paglia has discussed, too, but brilliantly and with very different conclusions) or to reproductive machines (incubators or dairies). It doesn’t occur to Smith that men are routinely reduced to supposedly sterile cultural abstractions or lethal machines (weapons). Not surprisingly, she fails also to acknowledge the profound psychological and moral differences between associating women with life or life-giving machines and men with death or death-inflicting machines (although, in other times and places, death was associated indirectly with the protection of life and therefore the renewal of life).

(8) “Like pregnancy and birth, breastfeeding cannot be compared to anything else. It is extraordinary, yet because only female people do it, it is often ridiculed, treated with disgust or aligned with women’s subordinate status … We’re the reason men had to pretend they were gods.”
Actually, pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding have been universally admired and even divinized. Among the earliest human artifacts are the “Venus” figurines, after all, let alone the vast array of later statues and paintings that depict goddesses (or Mary) with their infants. (So much for men, other than the few rulers such as Roman emperors, pretending to be gods.) On the other hand, not all goddesses are mothers or fertility figures. And, of those who are, some have also been worshipped in return for wisdom (such as Athena) or even success in war (such as Kali). Kali, a popular Hindu goddess, is associated with both death and rebirth, both creation and destruction. She represents nothing if not cosmic power. And her devotees are by no means confined to women.

(9) “On the other hand, no one has a problem with shaming us because we can’t breastfeed.”
I’ll have to take Smith’s word for that, but, once again, she makes it sound as if men are not shamed for being either unable or unwilling to do what all other men do effectively and gladly–notably, in warfare.
I could go on and on, but I won’t. I conclude by noting that Smith’s point of view, in itself, might be very worthwhile. People are not all alike, after all, and should be valued for whatever they can contribute to their families or communities. And that applies also to both men and women as collectivities. But Smith’s argument is littered with contradictions or double standards and tainted by gynocentrism (and its implicitly misandric fallout).

‘I don’t miss feeling my body was not my own, those moments when — usually pumping, not feeding — I feared I had become the patriarchal non-person: woman as animal, the very image of femaleness so often dreaded by adolescent girls (is that all you want to be, some beast of the field?).’ How dreadfully sad that the author’s and her daughter’s idea of motherhood is diminished in this way. Without the achievements of the so called patriarchy, the author would be living a very different life.

“Yet the men who would write us off, won’t change their minds.”
Once again we see a fem attempt to blame the excesses of their own ideology on men.
“It is extraordinary, yet because only female people do it”
The author longs to say ‘woman’. She’s sane enough to avoid ‘people who lactate’ but she can’t quite make a clean break, so she says ‘female person’. Take the next step Mx. Smith.

My better half has been breast-feeding continuously for nearly 12 years.
She says she had no particular doctrinaire reason for doing it, the main reason for her was it was so much handier than all the expense and faff of formula.
We tried top-up formula once, and once only. Our eldest little one promptly got colic, so never again. Our kids have never had colic. Reason for colic is formula makes little ones cramp up. We travelled the world with the kids, 18 hour flights etc, never a cheep out of them, boobs are a magic “off” button.
You’d see hapless bottle-feeding parents with screaming kids on planes, vainly trying all sorts to calm down little ones in discomfort because of cabin pressure changes etc. 
It was exasperating to watch their futile efforts at soothing (as you know, you can only give formula feeds at set intervals). So until it was time for their next bottle, the bottlers had to resort to games and other nonsense, none of which worked. Whereas all we had to do was for my BH to get her ya-yas out, and instant silence from the little ones. 
We’ve continually been amazed at how anyone can be bothered with the hassle, discomfort and expense of formula feeding. 
My better doesn’t drink of course, and that’s key to it. 
That’s the real hidden reason for so much bottle feeding – most Mums in Britain and Ireland need to get back onto wine-o’clock after a few weeks, so the breast feeding has to stop.  

“Collective pride”? What, are we going to devote a month to another vanity project? Welp, June’s taken . . .

Two things struck me.

First to borrow for the woke when talking about the statistical research I would say that it’s not a question of if statistical jiggerery pokery took place but how it manifest itself.

Secondly, I would such that why there are moronic men who hate women (for whatever stupid reason) I suspect most men see pregnancy as such a miracle that being able to help someone who can carry and feed a new life is quite a wonderful duty. What better can a man do than to help the mother of his children?

Patriarchy my ar£e

This is a fine article but “…bonded by collective pride at that power to gestate and birth…” is perhaps not a ‘thing to aspire to’ any more than “…bonded by collective pride at the support of my football team…” or ” “…bonded by collective pride at that power of my political beliefs…”
My guess is that breastfeeding is an intensely personal activity and hitching such feelings to a ‘collective pride’ could easily go astray.

Tedious article.
Humans are animals, and men and woman have different roles to play. There’s no need to get mystical about it, or bang on about the patriarchy.
Women ought to breast feed, if they possibly can. Is it hard work? It certainly was for my wife, at least at first, though it’s more convenient than formula over the long term, and much better for the baby.
Not willing to take a career break for extended breast feeding? For women who make that choice, it’s probably the first of many occasions when they’ll put their own desires ahead of the welfare of their child.
Can’t afford to take a career break for extended breast feeding? One answer is that you shouldn’t have children if you can’t afford them, but it’s not a very good answer. This far into the 21st century, we all ought to be rich enough to have several children and still enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.
With a less dysfunctional government, we’d be freer and richer. With a less self-obsessed culture, we’d be happier too.

Many of the comments in this thread are about the author’s double standard between men and women – how she complains about problems women face but ignores comparable problems men face, or how she blames men for women’s problems without considering how women might be responsible for men’s problems. There’s a general tone in the comments of: “what? more of this?”
The only solution to all this gender confusion is to simply be unafraid to say out loud that men and women are, and are supposed to be, different. That there is no such thing as the patriarchy. That women have long exercised power over men, in a different form than the power that men exercise over women. That women have many advantages over men, and men many advantages over women.
In this case it should come as no surprise that women are always going on about the problems of women, more so than men do about the problems of men. It’s because women are designed (by Mother Nature or Father God, your choice) to feel more, to talk more, and to be more attuned to their bodies.
Men are over here building stuff grunting at each other, while women are over there talking about how everyone’s feeling. This is terribly reductionist but true in broad strokes – and nothing for anyone to worry about. Men and women are, and are supposed to be, different.
And that includes male and female Unherd authors – who do, and are supposed to, produce different kinds of writing.

The pride women take in their female bodies ought to be a collective one. It should not be reliant on individual experience

Is this the same feeling we get when our country wins at the Olympics, or our local team wins a game?
I am not an athlete, but I still feel pride that my nation can produce exceptional ones. The conditions that allowed these athletes to succeed are a representation of my nation and I still benefit from those conditions even if not in the same ways.
Watching my sisters and other female relatives/friends have children also gives me a sense of kinship based on our shared sex.
I’m a female, and I don’t yet have children, but the acknowledgement of the possibility and the instincts that go along with it have shaped my experiences in life, just like any other circumstance would.
At the same time, this article is bizarre for me to read; I can absolutely commiserate with the ironic misogyny of modern feminism, but I can’t imagine feeling like I’m submitting to the patriarchy simply because my body is performing as expected.

Isn’t this all a bit déjà vu?
Since at least the 1950’s the controversy over whether to go for ‘in-flight refuelling (IFR) or Cow & Gate, has been the bane of child rearing!
Do we really have to go there yet again?