absolutelyBangkok archive · Health, body & mind
Originally published Aug. 24, 2008
All right, slap me for this topic choice, but it’s a serious one: The endangered culture of breast feeding in Thailand. Which is closely related to one of the weirder Thai laws. The law governing and regulating the covering of the female nipple.
To please our human needs, I wanted to start a column portraying and all but coy Thai girls with polite, aesthetic nudity. Well, just a thought. I therefore approached a female Thai webmaster who’s quite familiar with online posting of photos of beautiful Thai girls.
The first response I got: “Actually, I thought it was illegal to show nudity in Thailand. All the cheesecake magazines keep the girls just barely covered. Thai Penthouse is the only one I know of that has shots with some nudity.”
And my reliable Thai female webmaster goes on: “And I don’t know how they do it. Maybe costs them a lot of money paid to the right people? Not really sure about it.”
The more though you try to hide or cover up something, the more apparent and tempting it becomes, doesn’t it. But even publicly breast feeding mothers risk the ire of Taliban-like purists.
Overzealous puritanism is not the only, but a (!) reason why there are hardly any breast feeding mothers in a country adoring anything that has to do with children.
In Thailand only the best is good enough for children. People do anything to give their children everything. Why no breast milk?
When breast is best!
“, reads a recent article in the Bangkok Post quoting UNICEF: “Only 5.4 percent — or around 43,000 of the estimated 800,000 babies born in the country each year — are exclusively breastfed for the first six months.”
Astonishing. According to UNICEF this is the lowest exclusive breastfeeding rate in Asia and one of the lowest in the world.
The official explanation being that Thai mothers “think that infant formula is just as good as breast milk, which is far from the truth. Nothing can compare with the benefits babies get from their mothers’ breast milk,” says a UNICEF doctor.
Blame indoctrinated shames, attributed feelings of backwardness and the simple difficulties a mother is facing when trying to breastfeed her child.
And the article goes on: “Numerous studies have shown that breastfeeding is also very good for babies’ neurological development, and that breast milk can raise a child’s Intelligence Quotient (IQ) by 2-11 points, contributing to higher educational achievement.”
I’m not saying. I’m just saying.
Oh, here’s a Thai educational video on “self-sufficiency,” in case we’ve missed something:
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