Why does the United States continue to have one of the world's lowest breastfeeding rates and one of the highest infant mortality rates in the industrialized world? Health experts have projected that if all mothers were to breastfeed for just twelve weeks after giving birth, the country's infant mortality rate would decline by almost 5 percent.
But it's not always that simple.
There are a multitude of barriers that often get between a mother and her wish to breastfeed her child. Supply and Demand will tell the raw emotional stories of new mothers. Through personal stories, fascinating interviews, bold animation sequences and archival material, we will uncover the medical, economical, political, and cultural issues that conflict with a woman’s wish (and sometimes with her right) to breastfeed her baby.
Most importantly, we will examine the impact that feeding decisions have on the health and well being of babies and mothers and find out what we all can do to give new mothers the support that they need.
Advisors and Selected Interviews
Dr. Naomi Baumslag, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Georgetown University Medical School, is the author of Milk, Money and Madness: The Culture and Politics of Breastfeeding.
Dr. Mark Cregan, a molecular biologist who founded the Lactation Biology Laboratory at the University of Western Australia in Perth, made the landmark discovery that stem cells are present in breastmilk. In addition to his biomedical research, he lectures internationally about breastfeeding as a human rights issue.
Dr. Bernice L. Hausman, author of Mother’s Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture, is professor of English at Virginia Tech and coordinator and advisor for the University minor in Medicine and Society. She teaches and writes about medicine, sexuality, gender, motherhood, and women's literature. Since spring 2005, she has collaborated with a group of faculty and practitioners on an annual series of symposia concerning breastfeeding and feminism.
Dr. Jack Newman, a Toronto pediatrician, established the first hospital-based breastfeeding clinic in Canada, at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. Dr. Newman is a consultant with UNICEF's Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative and is a popular speaker at breastfeeding conferences across North America and beyond
Dr. Julie Smith, Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health, is currently researching a book on the economics of mothers’ milk. In her recent research she found the cost of not breastfeeding for the first six months of life in Australia to be between $60 and $120 million a year.