Breast Feeding Persuasive Speech

IT began just after I started to show. Friends, acquaintances and even strangers began to lecture me about breast-feeding. I was moved when mothers described the joy of bonding this way, but people talked a lot about antibodies, too. One night at a party, a woman I barely knew told me all about colostrum, racial disparities in breast-feeding rates and how I absolutely had to have a hands-free pump. By the time the teacher at our hospital birth class announced that she wouldn’t explain how to use formula because it was against hospital regulations, I was pretty fed up. I wasn’t sure if it was formula itself or talking about it that was against the rules, but either way I had had enough of the righteous zeal that surrounds breast-feeding. Surely a mother could bond with her baby if she was feeding her with a bottle?

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Seventy-nine percent of American mothers initiate breast-feeding, and 49 percent are still breast-feeding at six months. We come close to Canada, where just over half of women are still breast-feeding at six months, and we are way ahead of Britain, at 34 percent. Yes, Norway is higher, but France is much lower. In 2011 we met or exceeded most of the 2010 Healthy People Goals set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the moral fervor surrounding breast-feeding continues unabated, with a steady stream of advocacy and education campaigns, hospital initiatives, social pressure and workplace and insurance regulations designed to push breast-feeding numbers still