Is Breastfeeding the new Vacuum Cleaner?

This article in the April Atlantic Magazine opens with the question of whether breastfeeding is "this generation's vacuum cleaner - an instrument of misery that mostly keeps women down."

I eagerly anticipated the May Atlantic to see the letters from the breastfeeding mafia. Alas, no letters in the May issue.

I mostly disagree with the author that society and medical professionals pressure women to breastfeed and pump. Most of my friends who are breastfeeding do it because they love it. My friends who didn't enjoy breastfeeding were not pressured to continue.

The article did provoke me to think about pumping and social class. How would a factory worker be able to take breaks every 3 hours in order to pump? All that pumping stuff is expensive -- the pump itself is about $200-$300. We borrowed a pump but ended up spending about a hundred bucks on extra parts and pieces (tubes, attachments, various little plastic thingies.) And we must have spent a few hundred dollars on storage bags -- a box of 50 bags was $20 and I was blowing through at least 4-6 bags a day before I clued in on the reusable bottles. (Not that I was producing a ton of milk, I was pumping and freezing a few pathetic tablespoons 2-3 times a day.) And don't forget another $6000 for plastic surgery, nursing for 9 months is like 40 years of gravity.

Olivia visits the dentist

We took Olivia to the dentist a couple weeks ago. When they initially told me that we needed to start taking Olivia to the dentist as soon as she had teeth, I thought to myself "Wow, dentists must be feeling the sting of the economic downturn." My parents don't remember taking us to the dentist, nor do they remember brushing our teeth when we were babies. On the other hand, my parents spent a lot of money for fillings with our baby teeth.

What goes on at an 18 month old's dentist appointment? As I suspected, they did not scrape the tartar off her teeth or lecture her on flossing. It was pretty much a 4 minute appointment where the dentist counted her teeth then gave Spencer instructions on how to brush Olivia's teeth. Ka ching!