Breastfeeding legislation is confusing and needs review

Mothers cannot – and must not – be compelled to breastfeed their babies by law

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In the many years that I have been following the work of the Federal National Council, few pieces of draft legislation have stimulated the amount of public discussion that has accompanied the clause recently added to the Child Rights Law on breastfeeding for infants.

It was initially interpreted by the Minister of Social Affairs to mean that breastfeeding was to be the legal right of any infant and that, therefore, mothers would be in breach of the law if they chose not to feed their newborn children in this manner if they were physically capable of doing so. The minister, rightly, in my view, voiced her concerns.

The clause has prompted a wave of criticism, and, in a story published in this paper on Saturday, some members of the FNC’s health, labour and social affairs committee, which added the new clause, sought to introduce new explanations as to what exactly it meant.

The chairman was quoted as saying that although the term used in the clause, reda’a, implied breastfeeding, it actually meant all forms of feeding and was meant to ensure that fathers bore the responsibility for bringing home all that a child might need. The deputy chairman said the clause was intended to encourage breastfeeding, but not to make it a legal obligation on mothers, only to encourage them. A third committee member said that the clause was specifically about making breastfeeding a legal requirement, but said that it was unlikely in UAE society that a husband would take his wife to court if she failed to nurse a child.

I don’t understand how three members of the committee that added the clause can have such widely different interpretations of what it actually means.

At the very least, it suggests that the committee’s discussion, prior to adopting the clause, must have been somewhat perfunctory. Or is it that, now the tenor of public discussion is somewhat critical, some of those who voted for the clause are having second thoughts and have come to the belief that a redefinition of the meaning of the word used might prove helpful?

At the very least, the FNC’s health, labour and social affairs committee should seek a way of reviewing its original decision to remove the apparent confusion.

Personally, I have no doubt that breastfeeding is beneficial not only for an infant but also for a mother. The nature of human biology, and indeed of the biology of all mammal species, suggests that.

It is a practice that should be – and is – encouraged through education of mothers-to-be, and an enhancement of that education should be welcomed by all, making due allowance for the fact that, in some cases, it is simply not possible. Some new mothers, through no fault of their own, are simply unable to produce milk, or cease very rapidly to do so.

Others, for a variety of reasons, many of them perfectly understandable, may choose not to do so, and, unless a wet-nurse is available – and they’re in fairly short supply – then other options must be chosen.

Such non-natural forms of feeding an infant aren’t harmful, particularly in these days when knowledge of nutrition allows for formula milk, bought from the supermarket, to provide an infant with what it needs.

They don’t indicate that the mother is any less maternal in the way that she cares for her child and they certainly don’t mean that the child is necessarily deprived of something absolutely fundamental to its well-being.

I should make a personal disclosure here: I wasn’t breastfed as a child, for completely satisfactory reasons I don’t need to explain.

I’ve never felt deprived, whether emotionally or otherwise. Nor, as far as I know, do children of friends and relatives of mine who, for whatever reason, were not nursed by their mothers as infants.

What worries me most about this story – apart from the way in which members of the FNC committee are tying themselves up in knots trying to disclaim responsibility for the apparent meaning of the decision they have taken – is the idea that infants may have a legal “right” to be breast-fed.

A right to be nurtured effectively? Of course, and with proper prenatal education, and the biological capacity to do so, most mothers will probably opt to nurse their infant children. But mothers cannot – and must not – be compelled to do so by law.

Peter Hellyer is a consultant specialising in the UAE’s history and culture