The US baby formula shortage continues. Don’t tell desperate parents to ‘just breastfeed’

theguardian.com:

In the US today, states that have banned abortion can force you to give birth against your will. Yet in those same states – and the whole country – there is a severe shortage of baby formula. The baby formula shortage is just one of the many crises facing American parents: there is still no national pre-K, no guaranteed parental leave, and few protections for people who lose their jobs when they give birth or become pregnant.

But rather than blame the government for failing to protect children and parents, some Americans are blaming parents. Since news of the US baby formula shortage broke, there’s been a tidal wave of news and social media commentary yelling at desperate parents to “just breastfeed”.

And while there’s always ill-informed pushback to issues like this, the response to the formula shortage – which has gotten so bad that the United States is air-lifting baby food from Europe – has once again revealed the huge gap between the lived experiences of people who give birth, and the rest of society’s widely held assumptions.

A lot of this disconnect comes down to the misguided belief that being able to breastfeed is a biological given. People should just be able to get to it once the baby is born, right? Wrong. In reality, there are several reasons why people may not be able to breastfeed. While some parents are unable to produce a healthy breast milk supply, others may be taking certain medications or undergoing medical treatments that aren’t breastfeeding-safe.

The wildly misinformed notion that “breastfeeding is free” has also resurfaced as a popular refrain during this time. It’s an assumption that is rooted in the idea that this type of labor comes at no cost. In fact, there are physical, emotional and financial