The Big Letdown

How Medicine, Big Business, and Feminism Undermine Breastfeeding

By: Kimberly Seals Allers

Narrated by: Carmen Jewel Jones

Pediatricians say you should but it's okay if you don't. The hospital says, "Breast is best," but sends you home with formula "just in case." Your sister-in-law says, "Of course you should!" Your mother says, "I didn't, and you turned out just fine." Celebrities are photographed nursing in public, yet breastfeeding mothers are asked to cover up in malls and on airplanes. Breastfeeding is a private act, yet everyone has an opinion about it. How did feeding our babies get so complicated?

Journalist and infant health advocate Kimberly Seals Allers breaks breastfeeding out of the realm of "personal choice" and shows our broader connection to an industrialized food system that begins at birth, the fallout of feminist ideals, and the federal policies that are far from family friendly. The Big Letdown uncovers the multibillion-dollar forces battling to replace mothers' milk and the failure of the medical establishment to protect infant health. Weaving together research and personal stories with original reporting on medicine, big pharma, and hospitals, Kimberly Seals Allers shows how mothers and babies have been abandoned by all the forces that should be supporting families from the start—and what we can do to help.

©2017 Kimberly Seals Allers (P)2024 Tantor

The Big Letdown is true

Unfortunately, this is all so true in the lives of so many of my clients. This book helps people see what's behind the scenes.

Must Read

Love the supportive evidence that illuminates the societal and infrastructural influences that are involved in the narrative of breast milk as the "other" way to feed a baby. Breastfeeding is truly a golden standard that has been turned into a choice. Nothing is wrong with choice but the support to empower moms to breastfeed from healthcare/industry and society are truly impactful and need a major shift from profiteering on the vulnerable transition a woman makes into motherhood.

Whiny and Entitled

I am a CLC and therefore strong advocate for breastfeeding, but this book was a whole lot of self-entitled expectation that government, society, men, etc need to change in order to make women’s breastfeeding experience possible and without any cost to the mother. (i.e. women who breastfeed should be supplemented with social security benefits for the work of nursing their children.) This book felt a whole lot like a self-pity session on all the ways external circumstances stop women from nursing their children rather than acknowledging that having children, let alone nursing them, requires self- sacrifice on many levels. This sacrifice is both okay and totally worth it.