Breastfeeding Women Viewed as Less Competent

A study emerged out of Oxford University last week suggesting babies who are breastfed end up doing better in school. Yet despite such well-documented benefits for both mother and child, the percentage of American breastfeeding women remains “stagnant and low,” according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Why are only one-third of American mothers exclusively breastfeeding at three months, and only 43 percent breastfeeding at all at six months? Perhaps because they’ve gotten a sense of how harshly they are being judged.
Research just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (“Spoiled Milk: An Experimental Examination of Bias Against Mothers Who Breastfeed”) reports mothers who breastfeed are widely viewed as less competent than otherwise identical females. This disturbing finding was obtained in three separate studies, one of which also found breastfeeding is a handicap for women hoping to be hired for a job.
“Importantly, we did not find evidence that gender of the participant influenced perceptions of the breastfeeding mother,” notes the research team led by Montana State University psychologist Jessi L. Smith. Women, it seems, are just as likely as men to hold this bias.
In one experiment, 30 students told they were engaging in an “impression formation study” were given biographical information on actress Brooke Shields, including the fact she had just written a book about motherhood. Half were told the volume included information on her “experiences with breastfeeding, bathing and overall care of a newborn;” for the other half, the word “bottle-feeding” was exchanged for “breastfeeding.”....

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Tom Jacobs @'truth-out'