Honesty

I once took a negotiations class and commented to the instructor, "I'm an honest person. I want to make a fair profit on my products or services, and I want my customers to get a good value. If I work with people who feel the same way, wouldn't most negotiations be easy? Or am I going to be taken for a ride every time?" She told me that I was naive. "Negotiation is part of the game, part of the deal. You have to hold some cards to make the best possible profit."

I'm sure the instructor is mostly right. However web communication has allowed large, impersonal companies to make honesty and trust part of their brand. We can get consumer reviews, both positive and negative on most electronics and travel sites.

Funny, I think that's why the local hardware store, butcher and insurance agent prospered in the past. They were trusted to provide the best advice and products at a fair price. If they didn't, all the neighbors told you about it.

Lactivists

When my first child was born, I didn't really expect to become a "lactivist." But I did breastfeed my kids pretty much anywhere they were hungry. I was discreet and people around me probably didn't know I was nursing a child.

The marketing and public relations efforts around breastfeeding in the last several years have created the wrong kind of uproar. While medical experts agree that breastfeeding is absolutely the best nutrition for babies, there is always a group (usually of women) pointing out that bare breasts make people uncomfortable. And that formula is a reasonable alternative so that people don't have to be uncomfortable.

There doesn't seem to be the same kind of dialogue around other health issues. Most of us think it's OK for smokers to be pushed outside to protect the health of non-smokers. But no one should be made uncomfortable in order to insure a baby's health? We shouldn't expect a social change so people accept breastfeeding as a normal, healthy common occurrence anywhere babies are welcome?

It's a challenge to make the dialogue sensitive to mothers who choose to formula feed. Everyone has to find their own balance in childrearing. Formula is a "good enough" choice for a lot of families when breastfeeding would have been too stressful for one reason or another.