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George Watson And Mason 's Article ' Power Of The First Hour ' And Risworth, Et Al

Decent Essays

Watson and Mason’s article, “Power of the first Hour” and Risworth, et al.’s article “I was on the way to the Hospital but I Delivered in the Bush” both focus on aspects of maternal and infant care and demonstrate the fundamental differences between western policies enacted to improve women’s lives in developing countries and the local realty in those developing countries.
Watson and Mason ‘s article discusses the campaign by Save The Children to encourage breastfeeding by organizing a campaign entitled “Power of the first Hour,” in which they encouraged breasting feeding in the first hour of a child’s life, as the key to prevent the child’s death. While, the campaign had best of intentions it demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of why women chose not to breastfeed their children and invisibilizes women. This campaign assumes that women, especially in developed countries, who bottle feed their child are “uneducated on infant health, childcare and child rearing and as lacking agency and empowerment.” (573) However, in most cases women have very valid reasons for not breastfeeding their child that has nothing to do with their “lack” of education but numerous interrelated factors that cold make it impossible to breastfeed their child, leaving bottle feeding as the only viable option. Women may not be healthy enough to produce milk or they have another conditions such as HIV/AIDS, which could make it dangerous to breastfeed, therefore the choice to bottle feed is the wiser

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