A lot of women don't have the time to breastfeed. I know plenty of coworkers who have their nannies formula feed because the mother has to get back to her career asap, theyre both single mothers.
Regardless of if its a better option or not, some women dont have the time to feed their child 3 times a day or w/e and dont have a husband bringing in an income. These girls gotta get back to work to provide, it sucks, but most forumula companies market to these types of mothers because their the ones that use it the most.
Thats why they make breast pumps yo. In that case bottle feedin pumped milk is better than bottle feedin formula--if you gonna use a bottle either way might as well still try and give em the best u can. If you got the milk, if you got enough of it, if you aint got the time to nurse em, pump that shit. I always have a tough time understanding why in that situation, (as long as teh woman has enough milk) she wouldnt pump it. At that point u dealing with similar amounts of work...makin up the formula, boiling the bottles and the water needed for the formula, heating it, etc, vs pumping the milk and storing it and then heating it up when its needed. both are work, so i dont know that one or the other is really that much easier. (I dont know, Im just guessing. so i could be wrong.) Like i said before, they got pumps these days that will empty those milkbags out quick as hell. Electric double pumps, you just sit there gettin milked like a big ol' mama cow til you done, it aint nothing like those old hand pumps that take 45 minutes each breast, etc. When i was a kid my mom pumped her milk for me and my sisters for anytime when she couldnt be there to nurse us.
Honestly tho I blame the society in the US and the workplaces and the pitiful maternity leave laws we got here. If breastfeeding was seen as a necessary , important thing instead of a luxury, if employers respected women enough to allow them paid leave to take care of their baby and not just 3 or 6 months unpaid, if there was a focus on making work places friendly for children so that mothers could bring their child and let him sleep in a baby-space all day and then she could periodicly go over and nurse him and be with him on her breaks....If the need for a mother to care for her child was seen as JUST AS IMPORTANT as a womans career in the eyes of society and the men in charge...Maybe shit would be different. Women cant be blamed for needing to make ends meet and its a sad fact thats how shit ends up. But if breastfeeding was seen as a necessary, important, valued thing, not something that a mother should have to make a compromise on, if society was more accepting of it as something that everybody should have a right to and not just the "lazy" stay at home moms who dont work, etc, maybe shit would be different.
during World war 2,in the US, women were needed to work the factory jobs and other jobs that the men had left behind when they went to war. Women worked in huge numbers then, doin the mens jobs that were empty, but the thing is, the government knew they needed these women, so they were smart and did their best to take care of them. They set up child care centers in the workplace, so that women could bring their children to work with them and take care of them throughout the day. They had all kind of facilities set up to make it easier for these women to work and still care for their kids full time. It was pretty damn progressive for the US especially for that time. but when the war ended all that ended and women were expected to either stay home, or work and sacrifice bein able to take care of their babies full time.
It fuckin sucks that in this culture, you gotta choose one or the other. That a woman who has a high stakes, serious, involved career that she went to college for 4 years to learn, either gotta choose between "throwing away" everything she worked for to be a stay at home mom, or being a "bitch" and "selfish" and puttin her career first. (Im lookin at it more objectively and not thru the lens of my personal opinions. honestly,my feelings on it aint quite as strong as Deja's but still leaning kinda towards that. when women are in high paid, high rank jobs, making good money, you know, the upper west side manhattan type working in these advertising firms and law offices and publishing houses and magazines and shit like that, and they can AFFORD to hire nannies and shit like that out the ass and they got tons of money, they live in expensive homes, got 3 benz's, etc....and they pop out a kid then go back to work and let the nanny raise it...I think thats fucked up. They can afford to not work. But their career is their life, its the main thing thats important to them, and when a woman is doing that kind of 80-hours-a-week job at a investing firm or wtfever, those high-stress, high-involvement jobs that take up your whole life, I dont believe she should have a child.)
But, for the women who HAVE to work, who aint got no choice, becuz most of us do, and sometimes shit happens and you get pregnant...you get put in a tough spot. A woman who CAN not work, and just chooses to , when she has a little baby at home, I think thats fucked up yea, but most women aint like that. They need to work , and so do their men, and especially if they a single mom then they really got all the weight on them. they would love to stay home and nurse all day and chill with the baby but baby gotta eat and have a home and heat and lights, you know?
And the fact that a woman in that position, who really aint got much of a choice, would have to choose to stay home and live on the pitiful crumbs that welfare throws you, and sacrifice some quality of life for the baby, or stay working, but not be able to be there with her baby all the time, in order to keep them living in a halfway decent standard....That just fuckin blows. And thats how our society is set up. And if she stays home and goes on welfare everybody says "Oh you shouldnt have a baby on welfare, WTF's a matter with you, wat kinda mom are you, welfare mom, you should be prepared when you have a baby and have some money stacked up so you know you can take care of him, etc...." But if you go back to work when the baby is still little, and cant be with him every second, and gotta hire a babysitter or leave him in daycare, people talk shit about that too, about you being selfish for not moving heaven and earth to be able to stay home with your kid, and it just goes on and on.....
Like I said....the high paid, high power executive style woman with a serious career who has a kid becuz shes gettin close to 40 and dont wanna end up missing her chance, who hires 3 nannies to raise her kid and never sees him except for an hour at the end of the night once hes already asleep....That shit, dont seem right to me, and I feel like in that case, when you CAN choose between career and baby, you shouldnt choose the career.
But when you CANT choose, you are a victim of societys lack of respect for mothers and the real work and devotion it truly takes to be a mom. You dont get paid for that job, but the work you do is so very important. People dont treat a "stay at home mom" or "homemaker" with the same respect that they treat a "Realtor" or "Sales executive" and thats just how it is. And the companies that women work at, they dont offer a whole lotta options to women with children. Sure , you can stay home sometimes when your kids sick and gotta stay home from school. Great. Im talking about making affordable, QUALITY child care available to all women who need it thru the company, giving them PAID MATERNITY LEAVE so they can stay home for those first crucial months and not have to stress about where foods comin from, offering them flexibility and more options , more ways to work with the baby and the job together, not having to be these 2 mutually exclusive things constantly at war with each other.
I aint tryna rant about this so Ill be quiet now, but damn the shit just got me thinking of how fucked up our system in america is that mothers do so damn much yet in the grand scheme of things, other than lip service about how "moms are so great and we need them" and Hallmark cards and Mothers day, in reality, they get so little real respect. Its all talk but no action, and its sad becuz without mothers WTF would this society be. But the fact that in these times, a woman would STILL have to choose between nursing her baby and working to put food on the table, its just really fucked up to me.
