Is Breast Best?: Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood (Biopolitics Series)
This heavily footnoted defense of formula feeding will undoubtedly fan the fire between those who believe “breast is best” versus those who think manufactured food is just fine, thank you. Wolf, a political scientist, is on strongest ground when she discusses the history of this emotionally charged topic. Unfortunately, she seems out of her element when describing perceived flaws in medical studies of breast milk and talking about financial issues. Inexplicably, she fails to discuss the price of formula, which can easily run $1,000 to $2,000 a year. Instead, she talks about what she sees as the “exorbitant” costs of breastfeeding. (Presumably, she is referring to how it’s tricky for poor women to hold down a job and nurse their babies.) An expansion of a 2007 article Wolf wrote for the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, this pro-formula book treatise would have benefited from a more nuanced argument. For a better book, see Dr. Naomi Baumslag’s Milk, Money, and Madness (1995). --Karen Springen