The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Breast-feeding and Culture

Rachael, here's a partial answer to your good question: Breast-feeding rates vary in this country by income and race and maternal education. According to this from the Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog, which cites CDC stats, in 2005 "women living below the federal poverty line breastfed at the rate of 63%, and women living at 350% of the poverty level breastfed at the rate of 82%." Also: "Rates of breastfeeding were 81% for Asian Americans, 79% for Hispanics/Latinas, 75% for Whites, 67% for Native Americans, and 59% for African Americans." And 85 percent of college-educated women breast-fed, compared with 63 percent of women with less than a high school diploma.

What's going on here? The answer must involve culture--whether you know about the health benefits, whether a nurse at the hospital where you had your baby has the time to help get you started, whether your mother and sisters and other women you know breast-fed, themselves, and can help you over the rough patches, whether it's regarded as expected or weird in the community you live in. This article from the CDC blames low rates on "lack of social support" and lazy hospitals and lack of follow up. This article in Pediatrics found that immigrant women are more likely to breast-feed than native-born women in their ethnic groups, which suggets that the cultural push against breast-feeding happens here. Amanda's point about the relative ease with which white-collar, as opposed to other, jobs accommodate nursing is well taken.

But I suspect there's more than job-related obstacles at play. And in fact, the rate of breast-feeding has risen dramatically among some of these groups--26 percent among African-American women in the last 10 years.