Children's
Health,
Children's
Rights:
Action
for the
21st
Century

Thai child's painting.

ccording to Vanessa Griffen, a feminist author from Malaysia, "There are connections between the women's movements and the breastfeeding movement which we must recognise.ö Her definitive statement was reassuring for a Forum that is discussing ways of expanding the reach of the breastfeeding movement. Acknowledging that the women's movement was not previously very concerned with the issue of motherhood (a statement supported by a couple of speakers from the floor), she said that the women's health movement should ôreclaimö the natural way of feeding. 

She explained that the origins of both movements are very different - the breastfeeding movement in response to consumer challenge and the women's movement in the realisation that women wanted to be in charge of their own lives. 

But both are movements of "resistance." A broadening of perceptions, she seemed to suggest, would strengthen both movements. Penny Van Esterik, a founding member of WABA who is an anthropologist, took off from where Griffen left off. "In a breastfeeding culture, everyone would have the knowledge to support breastfeeding, there would be no obstacles to breastfeeding." She drew heavily from her close knowledge of the Thai culture to say that what we needed to do was to create caring cultures. 

"We need to reinterpret caring," she said, peppering her talk with examples of caring in Thai society. Care offers a paradigm shift in the concept of nurturing, and Esterik suggested seven characteristics of caring that would be useful cross culturally including caring acts, caring work and caring closely. Her comments provoked some reaction from the floor, with participants arguing that the onus of caring was also burdensome, and it is important to understand why nurturing has not been focussed upon by the women"s movements, which have different concerns in different parts of the world.