Dear Reader,
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The Economist published a piece this week on "Why women cannot make enough breast milk." It wore its citations well. It spoke with measured confidence. And it will quietly convince thousands of new mothers that their bodies are broken — when the evidence says otherwise.

The overwhelming majority of women are physiologically capable of feeding their babies. What fails them is not their mammary glands. It's the support, the education, the community, and the culture around them.

This one made me angry. Read my response below:

The Economist's Breastfeeding Story Is Part of the Problem

There is a particular kind of harm that arrives dressed in the language of science. It wears citations well, speaks with measured confidence, and it leaves new mothers more frightened, more alienated from their own bodies, and more convinced that the thing they are trying to do is beyond them.

The Economist's recent piece on why many women "cannot make enough breast milk" is precisely this kind of harm.

What Is Actually True

The overwhelming majority of women are physiologically capable of producing sufficient milk for their infants. This is not a controversial claim. It is one of the most robustly supported facts in the entire field of human lactation. The mammary gland, shaped by millions of years of mammalian evolution, is not a defective organ. It is exquisitely designed to do exactly what a nursing infant requires of it.

The number of women with genuine, primary lactation insufficiency rooted in irreversible glandular pathology is small — very small. Those women deserve accurate diagnosis, compassionate support, and real clinical attention. They do not deserve to be used as the headline framing for a story that will be read by millions of new and expectant mothers who are already drowning in anxiety.

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What That Story Does in the World

It gives a name and a veneer of scientific legitimacy to the single most corrosive belief in breastfeeding culture today: the belief that the body has failed. That the problem is cellular, structural, beyond the mother's influence or understanding. That she is, at some level, broken.

This is not science. This is mythology with footnotes.

What does the research actually show, consistently, across decades of lactation science and clinical observation? It shows that perceived insufficient milk supply is among the most common reasons women discontinue breastfeeding. Perceived. Not measured. Not diagnosed. Not confirmed by any clinical threshold or biomarker.

Women stop because they believe they are failing — and they believe they are failing because no one has ever explained to them how lactation actually works. They have not been told that:

• The breast is not a storage vessel but a dynamic, demand-responsive system
• Cluster feeding is biologically normal and not a sign of starvation
• The sensation of fullness is not a reliable proxy for supply
• A baby who nurses frequently for comfort is not evidence of poor milk quality

They have not been told any of this because we live in a culture that is deeply, structurally uncomfortable with breastfeeding — and has outsourced infant feeding education to the internet, where it is handled by strangers with opinions and formula companies with budgets.
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