Criticism
The Weston A. Price Foundation has criticized "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding", published by LLLI, as providing nutritional advice that may undermine some of the benefits of breastfeeding. However, the maternal nutritional advice given is widely accepted as best practice and is repeated by other breastfeeding organisations worldwide. The book has also been reviewed as easy to read, comprehensive and reliable, though unapologetically pro-breastfeeding.
One study of LLLI's philosophies and practices suggested a series of paradoxes: while promoting a sense of maternal competence, resistance to authority and the reclamation of their bodies, LLLI also promotes a conception of what it is to be a "good mother" that is biologically deterministic and socially prescribed. In an article that focuses on similar themes, Hanna Rosin, a journalist, not a scientist, notes that while La Leche League originally developed in part in reaction against the notion of the medical mother measuring out doctor's office chemicals for her baby, the contemporary LLLI uses a continual diatribe of medical testimony to push women toward their definition of "good motherhood." She suggests that LLLI and other pro-breastfeeding individuals/organizations paint mothers who do not breastfeed as cold and/or unresponsive to their children's needs. She cites studies that, she argues, suggest that breastfeeding, while nutritionally useful to children, is not so essential to children's well-being that it makes sense to demonize mothers who do not or cannot breastfeed.
Read more about this topic: La Leche League International
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—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
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