Courtney Jung - Lactivism: How Feminists and Fundamentalists, Hippies and Yuppies, and Physicians and Politicians Made Breastfeeding Big Business and Bad Policy

Copyright 2015 by Courtney Jung

Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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Designed by Cynthia Young

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jung, Courtney, 1965 Lactivism : how feminists and fundamentalists, hippies and yuppies, and physicians and politicians made breastfeeding big business and bad policy / Courtney Jung.First Edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-465-06165-5 (e-book)

1. Womens studiesUnited States.

2. BreastfeedingSocial aspectsUnited States.

3. InfantsNutritionUnited States. I. Title.

HQ1181.U5J86 2015

305.40973dc23

2015011122

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Serena and Peter, my inspiration

Contents

Y ummy Mummy is a small store in the middle of a quietly commercial block of Manhattans Lexington Avenue. Flanked by a dog accessory store and a beauty salon, it is surrounded by expensive boutiques specializing in children. A quick glance reveals a childrens optician, a childrens photographer, a handful of childrens clothing stores, and a nanny agency. Tastefully decorated and brimming with designer apparel and accessories for nursing mothers, Yummy Mummy fits right in. Its plum brown awning greets customers and passers-by with a friendly, if pointed, message: happy breastfeeding .

Located on the Upper East Side, just one block away from the mansions and penthouses of Park Avenue, Yummy Mummy is a self-styled breastfeeding emporium. A steady stream of new mothers pushing state-of-the-art strollers flock here to buy everything from bottles and bras to hip, stylish nursing clothes and breastfeeding supplements like Lactation Cookies. As it happens, Lactation Cookies look just like ordinary chocolate-chip cookies, but they include ingredients such as oats, brewers yeast, and flax seed to boost breast-milk production. (Yummy Mummy also sells fenugreek for the same purpose, which at ten dollars a package, costs half the price.)

Still, Yummy Mummys main business is breast pumps, which it sells at the small Lexington Avenue store and through its bustling website. Although breast pump sales have been brisk ever since Amanda Cole opened her store in 2009, they soared dramatically in 2013. That year, President Obama made a bold intervention in the world of breastfeeding advocacy by reforming the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to require health insurance companies to cover the cost of breast pumps for new mothers. At first, Cole worried that making breast pumps free to anyone with health insurance would be bad for business. Even before the ACA reform went into effect, the United States accounted for 40 percent of the global market in breast pumps, with 2.3 million breast pumps sold in 2010 alone. After the reform, analysts predicted the breast pump market would expand by 50 percent, and Cole didnt want to miss out on that burgeoning growth.

She moved quickly to make the new legislation work to her advantage. Insurance companies will only reimburse customers who purchase equipment through an accredited durable medical equipment (DME) supplier. These specialized stores normally sell institutional items like hospital beds and oxygen tanks; their no-nonsense aesthetic is light years away from the boutique-y world of Yummy Mummy. But, by deftly navigating the bureaucracy necessary to have Yummy Mummy accredited as a DME, Cole positioned her store to profit from the new plan almost immediately. Only months after the breast pump benefit went into effect, consumer demand had soared to the point that she hired an additional seventeen workers and rented space for a call center to handle the national orders coming through the stores website.

Yummy Mummy now has established relationships with twenty-five different insurance plans and ships hundreds of pumps per week. Industry analysts expect this market to grow even more, as news of the benefit spreads. By the end of the decade, the American breast-pump market should reach almost one billion dollarsand the market for the other breastfeeding equipment Yummy Mummy sells, including clothes, bras, creams, and pillows, will be roughly double that.

With a little help from President Obamas Affordable Care Act, breastfeeding has become very big business indeed.

LIKE SO MANY LIFESTYLE COMPANIES TODAY , from Whole Foods to the Arbor Collective skateboard company, Yummy Mummy is a compelling mixture of conscience and commerce, an enterprise dedicated to doing well by doing good. As a new mother in Manhattan, Cole was committed to breastfeeding but frustrated by the absence of good breastfeeding products and informed advice. Ultimately, that frustration exposed a market opportunity. Her neighborhood needed a place that would cater to, and support, nursing women. In 2009, Cole opened a store she envisioned as a one-stop shop for premium breastfeeding products and a community hub where expectant or new parents could consult well-informed sales associatesincluding Cole herself, who is now a certified lactation counselor. The store also offers a range of courses. There are standard offerings such as Childbirth Preparation and Baby Safety & CPR and less standard offerings such as Eat, Drink, Doula. Billed as a form of speed dating, Eat, Drink, Doula streamlines parents search for a labor coach by introducing them to five to ten prospective doulas in a single session.

The consumer culture that has grown up around breastfeeding says a great deal about its core demographic, its lifestyle priorities, and the resources it has to dedicate to breastfeeding. As its cheeky name suggests, Yummy Mummys mission is not confined to the worthy causes of infant and maternal health and environmental and economic well-being mentioned on its website. In contemporary slang, a yummy mummy is a sexy, glamorous motherwell dressed and, usually, well heeled too. Tabloids use the term to praise celebrity moms like Miranda Kerr and Angelina Jolie for refusing to let motherhood cramp their fabulous lifestylesand wardrobes. Yummy Mummy too signals that breastfeeding is no longer just for the crunchy earth-mother crowd. Along with breast pumps and vitamins, the store offers all the trendy fashion items and accessories a mother needs to nurse in style. Breastfeeding is the new black .

At this moment in the long history of infant feeding, when maternity and breastfeeding boutiques with whimsical nameslike The Pumping Station in Santa Monica or Manhattans Upper Breast Sidehave multiplied in desirable zip codes around the country, its worth remembering that the very idea of nursing in style marks a dramatic cultural shift. Not very long ago, the idea of breastfeeding stylishly would have seemed patently absurd. Back in the 1970s, many of the women who revived the practice of breastfeeding in the US were making a political statement, not a fashion statement. They were taking a stand for womens right to choose how to feed their babies, and against big businesses like Nestl that were peddling formula in poor countries at the expense of babies lives. But the mainstreaming of breastfeeding has generated not only countless bad punsa nursing pillow called My Breast Friend, a postpartum girdle called the Mother Tuckerit has also stimulated a booming market in luxury breastfeeding paraphernalia that the earlier generation of feminists, hippies, and countercultural mavericks could never have imagined.