The
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and First Lady Michelle Obama are
backing a new tax policy promoting breastfeeding. Backing, that is, a
tax deduction for breast pumping equipment which will allow working
women to stay at work while someone else watches their baby.
On
Thursday February 10, 2011 the IRS ruled that the cost of breast pumps
will now be considered tax-deductible medical expenses. This means that
women will be able to use money set aside in pretax spending accounts to
buy the pumps and related equipment, which can cost several hundred
dollars. For women without flexible spending accounts, the cost of pumps
will be tax-deductible if their total medical costs exceed 7.5 percent
of adjusted gross income. "We're working to promote breastfeeding,
especially in the black community, where 40 per cent of our babies never
get breastfed at all, even in the first weeks of life, and we know that
babies that are breastfed are less likely to be obese as children,"
Mrs. Obama said while promoting her 'Let's Move' anti-childhood obesity
campaign. "One of the most common reasons mothers cite for
discontinuing breastfeeding is returning to work and not having break
time or a private space to express milk," wrote Valerie Jarrett, a
senior White House adviser in an official blog. Though factual, both of
these comments merely address the immediate and visible side of
breastfeeding.
United
States Representative Michelle Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, on the
other hand, went to the heart of the matter by stating on radio that
Mrs. Obama's campaign and the IRS tax deductibility change constitute a
"nanny state." She went on to say, "I've given birth to five babies and I
breastfed every single one of these babies. To think that government
has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies. You wanna talk about
the nanny state? I think we just got the new definition of a nanny. I
think this is very consistent with where the hard left is coming from.
For them, government is the answer to every problem."
Not
surprisingly, the government has failed to grasp the greater benefit of
breastfeeding. While very important, the nutritional and physical
health benefits do not stand alone in their advantageousness. The
inextricable emotional and psychological bond that develops between
mother and child is essential to the development of secure persons,
families, and societies. The bond should blossom throughout childhood,
and mature into the teenage years and adulthood. This bond can last a
lifetime and transcend generations unless mother is not around.
Instead
of using the time to nurse her baby in her arms, a lactating woman can
spend uncomfortable hours each day extracting milk from her mammary
glands with mechanical devices in order to remain in a job, only to have
a handler feed the baby the milk from a bottle. This zoo-like feeding
is the first step in breaking the innate mother-child connection and can
pave the way for the unparticipatory mothering style of a seahorse. The
female seahorse makes eggs, then dumps them off onto the male to hatch.
She has other things to do. This lack of recognition of the importance
of hands-on mothering is culturally dangerous. Nations are held together
by their cultural identity. This identity is comprised of family
traditions. Mothers play a central role in the transmission of
traditions. Without maternal contact time children will not absorb that
culture and preserve their nation.
The
ultimate demise of Western civilization may not come from financial
collapse or terrorist attacks, but from the decision of educated women
to choose career advancement over the vocation of fully-present
mothering of the children which they bore. Instead of toiling over the
next contract, deadline or promotion, mothers need to see their baby's
first smile, bandage skinned knees and grapple with their teen over that
algebra problem. Moms' availability for the momentous and the mundane
strengthen a child's ability to love and be loved. This relationship can
then be extrapolated out to God, family and country yielding a strong
nation.
Other
nations seem to grasp this. Muslim birth rates, for instance, far
outpace those of the West. In the Middle East, Muslim countries like
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria fall within the top 100 on the list of
birthrates by the United Nations Population Division 2005-2010 with
births per 1000 persons at 48, 20, 31 and 27. This is rapid
reproduction. While Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the United States
rank on the list 183, 165, 151, 192 and 139 respectively. The West will
lose out by sheer numbers alone.
While
Western women with higher education have been taught that their
happiness lies in career achievements, access to expensive creature
comforts, and that one or two children are a sideline to their self
worth, Middle Eastern and Asian mothers are busy creating children.
Cultures of the near and far east will swallow the West numerically and
intellectually if occidental women don't "mother-up!"
Fifty-four
percent of American women have a career outside of the home, according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010. This means that someone else is
raising and shaping their children and the country's future. "Children
with higher quantity (total combined number of hours) of experience in
non-maternal child care showed somewhat more behavior problems in child
care and in kindergarten classrooms than those who had experienced fewer
hours," according to an ongoing National Institute of Health Study of
Early Child Care and Youth Development begun in 1991. This does not
portend well for Western civilization.
While
the birthrate of the People's Republic of China is not high, their
population is the largest on the globe at 1.34 billion compared to the
United States at 312 million. Recently, a Wall Street Journal op-ed
piece entitled, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" and the book,
"Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," both written by Amy Chua, sent waves
of maternal indignation over the media. Mrs. Chua elaborates on the
value of Asian mothers' very direct and strict involvement of the
rearing of their children. "I've noticed that Western parents are
extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about
how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they
constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are
notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In
other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's
psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility,
and as a result they behave very differently," Mrs. Chua says.
With
a gasp, Western parents bristled and looked away. However, with the
advance of the great dragon on the world economic and technological
stage; and its virtual ownership of American assets, perhaps Tiger Mom
has diagnosed a cultural disease Americans would like to deny, but need
to address. Western mothers are not involved enough in the formation of
their children. Time spent in infant or toddler day-quarters, and
before- and after-school watching services are crucial times in which
seahorse mothers could be shaping the way in which their children tackle
the world. Is a bigger house or an enhanced body region a fair trade
for a child? Not according to Mrs. Chua, a Harvard Law professor, who
believes in stringent mothering techniques like her own mother whose
efforts produced, in addition to Mrs. Chua, two other successful
daughters, a Special Olympics gold medalist and a physician-professor at
Stanford University School of Medicine. Mrs. Chua's mother's direct and
deep involvement with her own daughters is bearing good fruit. Her
daughter, Sophia, performed at Carnegie Hall in 2007.
Former
Alaska Governor Sara Palin popularized the term, "Mama Grizzlies"-a
term referring to the innate protecting and nurturing instincts of
mothers. She said in July 2010, "There's been a 'mom awakening' wherein
women are rising up and saying, 'No, we've had enough already!' because
moms 'kind of just know when something's wrong. I always think of the
mama grizzly bears that rise up on their hind legs when somebody is
coming to attack their cubs. You thought pit bulls were tough? Well, you
don't wanna mess with the mama grizzlies!" This is good, but
reactionary in nature. It is defensive which is admirable; but to
survive, a civilization must be ahead of its competitors. It must be the
innovator not the reactor. Only time will tell if the grizzly awakening
is enough.
So
while the grizzly may be a match for the tiger, the seahorse is the
certain loser. For America and the West to lead the world and not fade
away, mothers need to take time to cultivate and nurture their children
and remain directly involved in their children's daily lives. In sum,
Western women must step up, man up and mother up. The future of our
children and society depend on it.
-Kelly Kathryn Llobet is a spouse, mother and writer living in Baltimore.
