The War of Feeding: Between Abstract Systems and Concrete Mothers
We are in the midst of a chaotic war over breastfeeding.
On one side stands the long‑dominant public‑health slogan “Breast is Best,” wielding immunological data like an imperial sword and sanctifying breastmilk as the entry ticket to proper motherhood. On the other side rises the newer “Fed is Best” movement—and even more radical narratives such as “breastfeeding is exploitation”—which attempt to liberate women from biological constraints through formula feeding.
At first glance, this appears to be a binary conflict between “tradition” and “modernity,” “sacrifice” and “freedom.” Yet when we examine the texture of these narratives, we find they share a troubling trait: abstraction.
In this grand ideological tug‑of‑war, the concrete mother—the one pushing her boulder uphill like Sisyphus at this very moment—disappears.
I. The Trap of Hostile Narratives: When Pain Is Misattributed
Radical critics sometimes fall into a seductive simplification: because breastfeeding has often been used as a patriarchal tool to bind women, breastfeeding itself must be oppression.
In this narrative, the bottle becomes more than a container—it becomes a totem of female independence. Direct breastfeeding, in contrast, is cast as a form of biological exploitation, a pre‑modern servitude.
While this logic may symbolically “strike back” at patriarchy, it creates new fractures in real life. It implicitly suggests that women who breastfeed are “brainwashed collaborators,” while those who choose formula are the “awakened independents.” This is yet another false binary.
We must immediately clarify: the mothers who cry out “breastfeeding is exploitation” from within their pain are expressing real, legitimate suffering. Their mistake is not in feeling pain, but in attributing it incorrectly—equating the pain of breastfeeding within a system that offers no support with the pain of breastfeeding itself.
Our critique should always target the system that produces the suffering while hiding itself—not the women who endure it.
When a mother must pump in a bathroom stall because she has no lactation leave, or when she endures cracked nipples because she lacks professional guidance, this is systemic violence, not the fault of breastmilk.
II. Systemic Disappearance: The Privatization of Public Responsibility
Whether one praises breastmilk or formula, current debates privatize not only the child but the entire act of feeding—reducing it to a mother’s personal moral choice.
This is precisely the brilliance of the capitalist‑patriarchal alliance: it quietly transforms a form of public reproductive labor, which requires massive social support, into a woman’s individual preference.
If breastmilk is truly “best,” then has society provided the “best” support system?
- Are nursing rooms readily available in public spaces?
- Do workplaces offer extended maternity leave without penalizing career prospects?
- Do communities provide on‑call, insurance‑covered lactation consultants?
The answer is usually deafening silence. The system demands scientific perfection from mothers while removing every ladder of support, leaving only the airy admonition: “Do it for your baby.”
Conversely, if formula represents “freedom,” is that freedom without cost? Is it built on multinational formula companies’ colonial marketing in the Global South? Does it obscure the risks inherent in industrial food systems?
The real oppression is not “breastfeeding” or “formula feeding,” but the absence of choice.
When the system fails to support breastfeeding, formula is not freedom—it is resignation. When the system stigmatizes formula, breastfeeding is not love—it is fear.
III. The Limits of Science: Beware the Arrogance of the “Optimal Solution”
In this war, “science” is often wielded as the ultimate weapon. But scientific consensus is fluid.
Decades ago, science told us formula was more hygienic and more advanced. Today, science tells us breastmilk’s bioactive components are irreplaceable. Decades from now, with artificial wombs or synthetic biology, the compass may shift again.
We must distinguish carefully: what we should fear is not scientific method, but scientism—the arrogance of disguising value‑laden parenting choices as purely technical “optimal solutions.”
True scientific spirit is humble and falsifiable. It should expand a mother’s toolbox, not strip away her agency.
Science can measure antibody levels and nutrient ratios. But it cannot quantify the oxytocin released when a mother and baby lock eyes during a 3 a.m. feed. It cannot calculate the cost of a working mother’s lost sleep or stalled promotion due to pumping.
Parenting is not merely biology—it is sociology and psychology. Any scientific advice that erases the human condition and speaks only of “nutrient composition” is an authoritarianism disguised as objectivity.
Epilogue: From Sisyphus to Co‑Builders
Ultimately, we must return to the concrete mother.
She may wake at 3 a.m., torn between the ache of engorgement and the measurement lines on a formula bottle. She does not need grand theories about “exploitation” or “sanctity.” She needs one more hour of sleep, a cup of warm water, a non‑judgmental embrace, an environment that allows her to fail, to be imperfect, to change her mind.
If her choice arises from clear awareness of her circumstances and genuine concern for her baby, then wherever that choice falls on the ideological spectrum, it is already a victory against alienation.
We call for a concrete motherhood—a motherhood that submits to no abstract doctrine, neither the traditional “myth of maternal sacrifice” nor the radical “anti‑parenting narrative.” It recognizes that feeding is not merely nutrition but relationship, and in that relationship, the mother’s feelings matter as much as the baby’s needs.
This resistance is indeed Sisyphean—each night pushing the boulder uphill against gravity and exhaustion. But it need not be lonely.
Everyone who acknowledges the primacy of the concrete over the abstract, everyone who widens another’s space of choice within the system, becomes a co‑builder of this eternal project.
The co‑builder is the architect who designs accessible nursing rooms, the citizen who votes for longer parental leave, the colleague who tells a pumping mother, “Take your time,” and each of us who refrains from casually judging another’s parenting choices.
The one pushing the boulder is never just the mother—it is all who refuse to abandon thinking, feeling, and connection.
Only then can a flower of freedom bloom from the cracks of that stone.