I'm not qualified to speak on this issue. I don't want to step on any toes but the Atlantic Monthly this month has an interesting article.
"Even in the best of marriages, the domestic burden shifts, in incremental, mostly unacknowledged ways, onto the woman. Breast-feeding plays a central role in the shift. In my set, no husband tells his wife that it is her womanly duty to stay home and nurse the child. Instead, both parents together weigh the evidence and then make a rational, informed decision that she should do so. Then other, logical decisions follow: she alone fed the child, so she naturally knows better how to comfort the child, so she is the better judge to pick a school for the child and the better nurse when the child is sick, and so on. Recently, my husband and I noticed that we had reached the age at which friends from high school and college now hold positions of serious power. When we went down the list, we had to work hard to find any women. Where had all our female friends strayed? Why had they disappeared during the years they'd had small children?"
Again I don't think I'm qualified to comment, but I think the whole article needs to be read and addressed it's interesting.
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That article really bothers me but I can't really put my finger on why.
The claim that the benefits of breast feeding are "thin" is totally inconsistent with scientific research. So the lead-in comment and all the things she says about the "illusions" of the benefits of breastmilk are completely false, but that's a whole other blog post.
I think the article is problematic because it works off of a few assumptions that are very common. Like where do people get the idea that you have to stay home to breastfeed? I breastfed my daughter until she turned one, but I only took the three month paid leave I had available. And even while on maternity leave, I pumped and had a great backup supply of milk in the freezer, so I would often leave my daughter with my partner and he would feed her and care for her all day if needed.
And there's no reason why the father can't know how to comfort the child just as well as the mother. My partner always did. It just requires paying attention and putting in some time with the child. Further, my partner actually ended up taking on more of the household chores than his usual half, because of the time I would be tied up nursing or pumping. She always wanted to nurse after dinner, so he ended up doing the dishes every night. He often would be the one to walk around the house picking up stuff and putting it away or folding laundry while I was nursing. He didn't complain about this, and we both assumed it was just a part of the deal. Because it was a decision we both had made together.
But I would bet most fathers don't think or act this way, so the underlying gender attitudes about who should be doing what work is probably a bigger issue here. Sure it ties you down to nurse. But I thought that was preferable to pouring diluted corn syrup down my daughter's throat and increasing her health risks just so I could retain a bit of freedom. And, worst case scenario, it's a year out of your life. One year. And you can read, work on the laptop, pay bills, or get other paperwork done while nursing. It's not like you're forced to just sit there staring blankly at the wall for 30 minutes.
The bottom line is, if you don't want to invest the time and energy to breastfeed, you're going to find a reason not to, even if that involves ignoring a lot of research. But characterising a committment to breastfeeding as being "slavish" is ignorant and offensive. Nobody forced me or guilted me into breastfeeding. I did the research and came to my own conclusions. And then I fit nursing and pumping in around my schedule. But it's true that unless both partners are committed to it and willing to be flexible to adapt to it, it will be harder on the mother. But that's pretty much the case involving all domestic labor in this culture, so I don't think this is an issue with breastfeeding alone.
And referring to pumping as "relieving yourself"? Seriously? If you follow the lead of many breastfeeding-haters who think women should take their child to the bathroom to breastfeed when in public and equate breastmilk with piss and shit, then I can understand why you'd be reluctant to do it. What I can't understand is why she does it at all.