Isn't it time boobs came back into fashion?

Unless you or one of your friends is currently parenting a very small child, you might not be aware of Facebook's attitude to breastfeeding photos. Not only does Facebook routinely delete any pictures of children being breastfed, some people have actually been banned for this apparent “offence”. Of course, this fits into the broader picture of America's bizarre fear of the human body, and particularly, the apparently detrimental effects on children of seeing it, but my rant here is rather more focussed than that. Stigmatization of breastfeeding is a growing phenomenon which actively discourages women from doing what is best both for their babies and for them.

The World Health Organisation recommends children be breast fed for at least the first 2 years of life, and finds benefits for children in being fed for up to 6 years. Breastfed children have stronger immune systems, decreased risk of sudden infant death syndrome, less chance of diabetes, less childhood obesity, and less chance of developing allergies, while their mothers have amongst other things, decreased risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and heart disease. So, it's pretty clear that by breastfeeding her child, a mother is doing the best thing for that child, and for herself. Why, then, is there often so much resistance to seeing a baby feeding? An increasing number of shopping centres, coffee shops and restaurants provide feeding rooms, and I'm glad they do; anything which makes mothers feel more comfortable and empowered about breastfeeding their kids is a good thing, but we must be careful of presuming that because those facilities are there, they must be used. I've heard of women being asked to leave coffee shops because they were feeding their kids, and I've heard others likening breastfeeding in public to peeing in the street.

Let's just put that common comparison to bed; peeing in the street increases the risk of disease, and creates an unpleasant smell for everyone. Breastfeeding reduces the risk of disease, and has no unpleasant side effects. If you've never been in a feeding room, you may not know that they are rather like toilets; indeed, some even have a toilet in the corner (not the communal ones!). They're generally windowless, and mothers are often provided with a hard plastic chair to sit on. Imagine that you've gone out to meet your friends for a coffee and a cake, and your baby suddenly needs feeding. While your friends continue to chat, you have to go away to a separate, dark uncomfortable room, and sit on a hard plastic chair for perhaps 20 minutes; and this, remember, is your reward for doing the best thing for your child. If you fed her with a bottle, nobody would expect you to leave the room.

So, why does this happen? Why is a baby having it's dinner such a big problem around other people having their dinner, and why such a difference between breast and bottle feeding? The answer is, of course, boobs. Through a variety of means, we have come to regard breasts as being fundamentally a sexual thing, and that's just not the truth. Sure, they are erogenous, but so are ears, and lips, and nobody claims they should be hidden. The fact is, breasts are for feeding children; that's the evolutionary reason for their existence, and it's their most important function. The result of this is that women are subject to all sorts of hassle that men are not; if it's hot, they can't take their shirts off, for instance, and then, just to cap it off, there's the breastfeeding. I've heard mothers saying they didn't breastfeed because it's weird, because breasts are for their husbands, because it's a sex thing, and I've heard a father call feeding a child in the way that humans have for millions of years “unnatural”, and I'm sick to death of it. And it's not like it has to be this way, it's not basic human nature; after all, in many African countries bare breasts are the norm, and it doesn't seem to have every man pawing and baying and every parent crying “Think of the children”.

Facebook bans images including any nudity because there's an assumption that nudity is sexual, and sexual is bad; essentially any nakedness is porn. I take issue with that on the general level, but especially when it comes to breastfeeding. If something as prevalent as Facebook treats breastfeeding as porn, the effect on the rest of society is considerable. Time to grow up, world; boobs may be all lovely and decorative, but they're basically there to feed children. If you think Facebook needs to get its act together, follow this link to sign a petition.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2517126532&v=wall

What is a leader?

I write a lot about management, and also about leadership, and a question that often arises concerns the difference between the two. For me, management is, in its essence, a very easy beast to pin down; a manager is someone who has responsibility for the supervision of others, and is judged at least partly on the basis of their results. There are a multiplicity of more and less effective ways he might go about these tasks, but essentially, it is these things that define him as a manager.

Leader, however, is a much more slippery term; for one thing, it's not a job title. You don't have to be a manager to be a leader, and many managers are not, in any real sense, leaders. It's true to say that leadership qualities are implicit in many job descriptions, getting that job will not automatically make you a leader. It's that tricksy word “quality” that's the key here; leadership is a quality, and the result of exercising a set of skills, it's not a job.

So, to get tighter hold of it, let's distil it back to its essence. A leader is someone who others are willing to follow. This can mean that in some senses, leadership is transitory; people can become very effective leaders for short periods in certain circumstances; an individual who is so pushy and directive that he crosses the line into rude can be just the ticket when the building is on fire, and you need someone to get you out before everyone burns, but if the people in question are social workers, then continuing to lead them in less extreme circumstances will require a different approach. Thus, we come to the idea of effective leadership, and particularly, leadership which can be effective in the longer term.

So, what makes an effective leader? The answer, in one form or another, is influence. A leader is someone who can get people facing in the same direction willingly, get them to buy into her vision of the future as their own, and who inspires loyalty in others. And that, in my view, is what anyone with managerial responsibility should be aspiring to; sufficient influence that the staff working for them willingly engage and deliver, without needing to be coerced or financially incentivised. How can that be achieved? In many ways, which are and will be the subject of other blog posts, articles, learning modules and books. Suffice it to say that when I mention leadership, this is what I mean.