IRS and Breast Pumps: The Unexpected Political and Quite Taxing Arguments of Breastfeeders vs Bottle-feeders
February 26, 2011
by Karen
|The opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author, and not the opinions of The New Agenda.
Women’s breasts and the breasts’ role in child rearing has become a subject of serious political debate. Oh, yes, reality is indeed stranger than fiction. The controversy began when the IRS announced that “the purchase of breast-feeding equipment would be considered a medical expense” and therefore be tax deductible and could “be reimbursed under flexible spending plans.”
First Lady Michelle Obama, a breastfeeder, spoke up about encouraging mothers to breastfeed in order to reduce childhood obesity and to provide health benefits. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, also a breastfeeder, who has more children than First Lady Obama spoke against this. According to Rep Bachmann, the reimbursements and the tax deductions (not to mention First Lady Obama’s concern with what women choose to do with their breasts) could lead to the creation of a nannystate.
This has resulted in many women talking about the practical functions of their breasts and how the bureaucracy should regard them. Diane Rogers is an economist expert and a mom who had chosen to breastfeed her four children. She is also against tax-deducting breast pumps as a medical expense:
But a breast pump is not a health-related expense, as it’s not necessary in order to treat a medical condition or ailment. It’s a work-related expense that happens to promote or be consistent with a healthy activity. For the vast majority of women without severe obstacles to breast feeding the natural way (direct from the source!), breast pumps are not necessary in order to breast feed one’s baby unless and until mom goes back to the office and can’t have baby with her.
Breastfeeding is highly subject to social and cultural norms. To me, social conservatives seem more willing to breastfeed than are social liberals. Michelle Malkin has also breastfed her children, yet as with other conservatives, she is also against the tax deductions because it will discriminate against mothers who chose not to or who cannot breastfeed:
… Bending the IRS code to confer preferential tax treatment on breast-pumping working mothers over stay-at-home nursing moms who don’t use pumps and other moms who for whatever reason have freely opted not to breast-feed their babies.
The preferential tax treatment will also discriminate against two homosexual men who adopt a newborn and against a heterosexual father whose wife tragically died during childbirth. Unless biology has radically changed this past month, men cannot lactate. Will their children be doomed to obesity?
Reality is that breastfeeding throughout history has been subject to social and cultural norms. In hunter-gatherer societies, mothers tend to breastfeed 2 -3 years; this saves on meat and plant resources because the nursing children do not need to eat those. Furthermore, women are less likely to become pregnant again while breastfeeding. In industrialized cultures, women are more likely to bottle-feed so that they can return to work – all a part of equality in the workplace. Throughout Europe’s medieval era, the royal and noble families used wet nurses. High-status women refused to breastfeed their own children because they considered it animalistic, lower class, and beneath their dignified status.
Mothers are hassled for bottle-feeding by someone with different cultural beliefs and/or are hassled for breastfeeding longer than the cultural norm. The decision to breastfeed is up to the mother. Breastfeeding provides no more nutritional supplementation than does vitamins. Unless a person’s actions threaten others, the government and our legal system could keep silent about what people decide to do. Breastfeeding is irrelevant to the health of the child. A research director with a Ph.D, Rebecca Goldin stated that repeated research about the health benefits of milk vs formula has been inconclusive:
The result is that we cannot discover whether breastfeeding is correlated with obesity because infant formula or bottle feeding leads to subsequent overeating or disposition to being overweight, or whether those parents who breastfeed are also more likely to offer their children green beans instead of French fries. Despite weak evidence, there is a lingering conviction that formula causes obesity among pediatricians and the press; if anything, the study about infants should make us reflect more carefully on this conclusion.
… The simple observation [is] that overweight kids are fed a variety of foods that are known to increase weight raises what should be an obvious question: are people who use infant formula more likely to eat at McDonald’s? If so, one cannot say that formula is the culprit for obesity rather than McDonald’s.
The moral of the article is that the government and the IRS should not give preferential or discriminatory treatment over whether or not women choose to breastfeed. Furthermore, all these additional deductions accomplish is a bigger headache for women when they fill out tax forms. A conversation I had listened brought up comments such as “Adding more and more things to be able to itemize for deductions doesn’t really help anybody, except those who want to sell us tax software or accountants,” and “this is just a ploy to make women feel good because they are doing this “patchy” things, and the overall effect is to continue with a system more cumbersome that in the end has more benefits for those who can make deductions.”
Uh. As much as the breastfeeding lobby can sometimes be regressive and anti-woman, what about the common use of breast pumps to relieve painful mastitis? Isn’t that a “health condition”?
This is such a small tax deduction and I support it fully. As a stay-at-home mom who breastfed and rarely pumped, I do not feel discriminated against with this sort of tax deduction. If we were to make sure that every tax deduction did not “discriminate” we would not have a single one.
BTW, pumping is such a huge pain in the (breast) and I applaud working moms for making the efforts to do this for the best health of their babies. If a tax deduction makes this the tiniest bit easier for working moms, that’s great!
Henrietta:
“If a tax deduction makes this the tiniest bit easier for working moms, that’s great!”
Do you really think this makes working women’s life easier? How much can this deduction amount to? Is this issue a distraction, in which MO is spending so much political capital instead of focusing on the issues of sexism and violence towards women in our culture, including violence towards women politicians (in action and in speech?
This discussion just leads to the cultural fights among women “to feed or not to feed”. I think women in both parties are spending too much time on this, and losing focus on the big prizes.
Michelle Obama has picked some really problematic issues to work on, like childhood obesity, a cause which will probably further stigmatize teenage girls for having less-than-”perfect” bodies (how I miss Laura Bush’s literacy campaigns.) But I don’t think that arguing for policies that make it easier for women to pump milk necessarily contributes to the cultural breastfeeding wars. Quite the opposite, because even though these policies promote breastfeeding, they directly contradict the most extreme advocates’ positions that there are no serious barriers to breastfeeding for women who would like to do so, and that pump feeding doesn’t count as “real” breastfeeding.
I think both sides in this debate are somewhat guilty of viewing women as food dispensers. The prevailing culture says that breasts are primarily sexual, and breastfeeding advocates say, no, no, they’re functional, they’re for feeding babies. That’s why issues like mastitis never come up; that would require a third way of viewing breasts, as belonging not to men or babies, but to women.
There are plenty of health related reasons for breast pupms to be covered by insurance. For both the mother and infant.
And it is not discrimination against non pump users if we cover them. Any more than it is discrimination against non IV pump users.
The whole question hinges on medical need.
Heck, if I don’t need a pump I don’t need one. Whether that’s to remove my milk, of give me chemotherapy.
“Breastfeeding provides no more nutritional supplementation than does vitamins. Breastfeeding is irrelevant to the health of the child.”
Okay, there are so many things wrong with these two sentences.
1. Breast feeding provides no more nutrients than vitamins?
-Aside from vitamins, breast milk also contains disease fighting antibodies that protect infants from many different types of illnesses. The mother’s immunity to these things is transferred to the infant. I don’t see that for sale in a drug store.
2. Breastfeeding is irrelevant to the health of the child?
-Breastfeeding protects infants against illnesses (due to the antibodies I mentioned above), protect from food allergies, may lower risk of SIDS, lower risk of obesity, possibly raise intelligence, and many other benefits. And of course, nothing, can replace that bond that exists between a nursing mother and child. I’m not saying bottle fed children don’t have this bond with their parents, they do, but it every bond is different. A nursing relationship definitely is.
Point being? Do your research about breastfeeding before you decide to write an article about it.
Source- http://www.babycenter.com/0_ho......bc?page=1
(Their source? The American Academy of Pediatrics.)
The New Agenda revealed its own take on the
breast feeding war” in this statement: “Breastfeeding provides no more nutritional supplementation than does vitamins.” Might as well add that vitamins provide no more nutrition than “real” food.
Lindsay is right on in her response.
Babies are not calves and cows milk is not appropriate for them; why feed the baby supplements when the real thing is at hand, as it were.
Some tribes of hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists breast feed their children longer than two years and some were known in modern times to allow their children to suckle as old as six or seven when they were in distress and in need of comfort not food.
Type this into Google search – breastfeeding benefits.
catsden,
Since you took the time to read Karen’s piece, I’m sure you read the disclaimer which precedes it:
The opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author, and not the opinions of The New Agenda.
I personally do not agree with Karen either – but she has a right to a POV, and she took the time to put it into words and express it on our blog. If you disagree, please feel free to submit your opinion to blog@thenewagenda.net
Oh boy. One sentence in the article and we’re going to be subjected to a novel-length list of the supposed benefits of breast-feeding. I’m not knocking breast-feeding here, but most of these studies are CLEARLY correlational, and most these benefits are better explained by third variables- like NOT being born into poverty.
In terms of the tax write-off? I’m a woman with no intention of procreating, and I don’t feel discriminated against if women can deduct a pump, any more than I anticipate people feeling discriminated against for not having access to my expensive MS drugs unless they have MS. That said, this does feel like a big distracting fight over- what? A ten dollar deduction? Couldn’t we do something that would ACTUALLY benefit women instead of bringing up yet another scrimmage in the Mommy Wars?
Interesting Sandra.
I might add that I worked in corporate America for 20 years and did not know a single woman at work who breastfed after she returned to work. You take your 3 months, breastfeed during maternity leave if you can (many of my friends could not because their milk did not come in and they felt terribly guilty). I did breastfeed, hated it, stopped when the guilt subsided and/or my kids got big enough that I couldn’t keep up with their eating needs.
And BTW, I have never once (except one year) been able to itemize due to our tax code for what it’s worth. I agree this is yet another red herring for both sides to stake their ground and be divisive. It stinks, no rots, of partisanship.
And need I remind you that our mothers (well, my mom’s generation) were told that formula was better than breast milk….and of course smoking and alcohol during pregnancies were perfectly fine too!
Everything that I have stated comes from the sources I have cited. Even if I have not quoted directly, please read the source links.
Furthermore, there is no reason to lambast the entire article over one sentence. This article is not about the health benefits of mother’s milk; this article is about tax deducting.
Valentina, Sandra,
Honestly, I feel that some of the conservative feminists that Karen listed in her article brought this woman vs. woman bickering upon themselves. What is the big deal. I am really surprised anyone is complaining about a small tax deduction for some women.
Since I am self-employed I am an itemizing queen, because I have to be. I HATE EVERYTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH ANY ITEMIZED ANYTHING! Taxes are painful enough and I wish year after year that they could be easier. Many parents cannot itemize anything because they fill out the easy form, so saving your breastpump receipt is all for naught. If you only have that one receipt out of all of your yearly medical expenses then good for you, you saved yourself a couple of bucks and spent close to $300 for the pump. This is appeasement 101. Make the mommies think that you back them by giving them a pretty meaningless deduction. The number of families that will lessen their tax burden with this one receipt is pretty minuscule. Just because you can deduct it doesn’t make it worthwhile. It is like getting 10% off of all purchases above $300 dollars, you have to spend $300 to get it!
Henrietta,
“the conservative feminists that Karen listed in her article brought this woman vs. woman bickering upon themselves.” I agree, and said so in my post. Even though I don’t think conservative women who spoke are not saying they are at all against breast feeding, as many have tried to portray.
You leave the other side of the bickering though. MO jumping on such a small issue, and making it as if she was addressing one of the greatest hurdles women face (so that MS Magazine can call her husband “that’s what a feminist looks like). What a waste of political capital and airtime, although it seems it pays off with some women, it achieves the “feeling good and hopey” as if the administration is doing something for women. . I am not going to even address the $10 benefit (if at all)… for all this discussion and big announcements?Give me a break.
Let’s tell them both left and right to avoid cat fights (we women disagree on this. Lindsay’s arguments were full with “maybe”"possibly” which are quite misleading) and focus on other women’s issues of greater importance, and where women have no choice or are greatly at a disadvantage. Violence against women, equal pay anyone?
We are fortunate we have good choices on this (I certainly don’t think breast fed children are superior to bottle fed): to B. feed or not to B. feed, we don’t need to make it an existential issue.
“I don’t think conservative women who spoke are not saying they are at all against breast feeding, as many have tried to portray.”
From what I can tell, conservatives are actually stronger advocates of breastfeeding than liberals are. But whether or not to breastfeed is actually irrelevant to whether or not the pumps should be tax deductable.
I wasn’t implying that breast fed babies are superior. I was just offended by the lack of respect towards breastfeeding in the context of this article. I may not be a pediatrician or a scientist, but breast feeding has benefits. To ignore them, undermines the entire issue of the reasons why they WOULD give women a tax break for breast pumps. To encourage more women to breastfeed and make it easier on them. Going back to work is the hardest transition for a nursing mother, it is the most common time that women choose/have to give up nursing. Why not give them more encouragement or motivation? Especially in a country that has such a constipated attitude about breastfeeding, I think this sends a good message and is not necessarily something to get worked up over.
Breastfeeding benefits the mother as well. It reduces the risk of breast cancer, uterine and ovarian cancer, prevents post partum depression, helps women lose post partum weight loss.
So if the government wants to help some mommas out, I say go for it! That is just my personal opinion.
There are breast feeding benefits to Mothers as well as to the babies. Infants need 800 to 1000 calories a day. Breast feeding helps women loose their pregnancy weight quickly.
Cows milk is harmful to infants, it has far to much protein and not enough carbs and stresses babies bodies when they have to eliminate the excess protein. Baby formula is extremely expensive.
I think the people who make vitamins make their products in good faith and they put in them the compounds that are recognized and understood by science. Science doesn’t know everything or maybe even most things. So it is reasonable to expect that compounds that have not been discovered to be of value to humans are left out of vitamin formulas because of our ignorance. Also there are substances like enzymes and antibodies that are in human milk but are not in infant formula. So it seems best to get your nutrition from natural occurring sources throughout your life.
That said I did bottle feed one child because breast feeding her just didn’t work. Strangely my milk just didn’t come in and she was losing weight which scared me and I was an experienced Mom at that point. She is perfectly happy and healthy and I think both she and her Dad benefited from him taking on some of the feeding responsibility. I think this entire controversy is a crock. Tax breaks never make sense and they are not fair so trying to hold a tax break for some women to a fairness standard that isn’t observed in any other instance is a sexist crock.
Optixmom – Your arguments make total sense to me especially in the context of conservative principals. I wish Michelle Malkins had made such an argument without getting into, “This is unfair to nonbreastfeeding moms!” and “Breastfeeding ain’t it’s all cracked up to be nutritionally!” That’s just a divisive way to go and will certainly make some women, who really work hard to breastfeed/ pump etc. and also have their own stories/ experiences with breastfeeding and the health of their child feel upset.
Valentina – Those are also excellent points. Although I have no issue with this deduction, it’s really peanuts all things considered.
Karen – I really like the title of your article. It sums up well how this issue led to women attacking women and as Sandra stated, the tired mommy wars argument about the virtues or (not) of breastfeeding.
But I think it’s natural that some commenters might respond with defensiveness about breastfeeding considering your quote of Rebecca Goldin and your statements:
“Breastfeeding provides no more nutritional supplementation than does vitamins.”
and…
“Breastfeeding is irrelevant to the health of the child.”
I think this part of your article encourages the Mommy Wars (breast feeding is best! vs. breast feeding is no different from formula!) to continue.
Is Viagra a medical expense? If so, then breast pumps should also be considered a medical expense. Why should men who don’t have erection problems be discriminated against? Why should men who don’t seek medical treatment for their erection problems be discriminated against. When will we hear Malkin et al defending all these poor men who don’t get that viagra deduction? Or at least explaining why they are silent and comfortable with the double standard.
BTW, the comment about how Bachman has more kids than Obama is irrelevant. Bachman’s having more kids doesn’t give her opinion any more weight.
If a woman is in a high enough tax bracket that the deduction of something that costs around $250 will yield a return larger than what it costs to take her other children to McDonald’s, she doesn’t need the tax deduction. This is just a another way to get women to fight among ourselves over what should be a personal decision. Social engineering by tax code.
The only people who can deduct the cost of a breast pump are going to be fairly well off, those with enough income and medical expenses to itemize.
This whole issue is like a diversion to get people arguing about an imaginary crumb being tossed our way. This really is “social engineering by tax code” and it’s one of the more bizarre things I’ve seen.
Tax breaks don’t ever make sense and they are not fair. They are all attempts at social engineering. When ever a story like this is thrown out it is meant as a distraction (or an excuse to feature naked breasts on TV). So we need to be watching for what The powers That Be are trying to distract us from. This entire controversy is a cooked up crock of stinking half composted bull$h!t.
Henrietta, thank you for your comments, but please read Malkin’s article because her article is much more similar to what Optixmom has commented than what I said in my article. Don’t just paraphrase me.
Samsmom, yttik, and Bes definitely have the right ideas here in the most recent comments.
The author of this post says: “From what I can tell, conservatives are actually stronger advocates of breastfeeding than liberals are.”
The credibility of this post is undermined by the utter lack of scientific evidence for that statement.
The New Agenda, to its credit, welcomes the views of conservative and liberal women alike. Unfortunately, humans are tribal and women (as a group) are not a natural tribe. It is therefore difficult to get women as a group to come together on anything. But if there was a single issue on which women should be able to agree, one would think it might be support of breastfeeding , even if all new mothers cannot engage in it. Instead, by sponsoring this post, TNA fosters the divide of the Mommy Wars. All tax deductions are discriminatory in nature in that only certain tax payers may avail themselves of them, none more so than the mortgage interest deduction which grossly discriminates against renters. I don’t see Karen or any other TNAer railing against that.
The disclaimer notwithstanding, TNA, given its mission, should not provide a forum for an anti-woman point of view. And make no mistake, that’s exactly what this post is — anti-woman, anti-feminist, and sexist.
Nell, please note that I began my statement with “From what I can tell…” Beginning with such a statement means what I had said is mainly my own viewpoint. Please pay attention to what is actually said instead of what you want.
And the decision to breastfeed is all up to the mother – some women want to, but others do not. Either decision is fine.
“Please pay attention…”
Your condescending attitude and sanctimonious preaching will not win readers to your point of view, Karen. If your comment vis-a-vis conservatives’ greater support for breastfeeding was indeed simply your unsupported opinion, you should have clearly said so.
But then, we all have our faults. I myself never did suffer fools gladly. I have no patience for debate with an opponent who can’t make a simple logical argument. As has been pointed out by others besides me, you lost your tax argument early on and never recovered. Now your only comeback is to shake your finger like a stern schoolmarm and admonish your readers to “pay attention.” Weak, really weak.
Sadly, this post reflects poorly on both the judgment of TNA’s leadership and the many other fine contributors to this blog.
Karen, I read Michelle Malkins piece. She does use a “not fair for the nonbreastfeeders” argument as well as the “no nutritional advantage” argument so I don’t understand your point.
And I do agree with Nell in terms of your personal anecdote comparing conservative and liberal breastfeeders. I don’t think this was necessary and I can see how this could be construed as divisive.
Still, I appreciate the piece and it’s caused me to reevaluate the whole tax credit for breast pumps agenda. I still have no problem with it in theory but now I do see this as a weak attempt to score points with Democratic women, instigate an argument with Republican women (just to underscore how Dems are just SOOO pro-women) while in effect, giving women almost nothing.
So as much as I disagree with many things you wrote in this article I give you kudos for writing it and for the great thought and debate it instigated here.
Nell,
Accept my apologies for the tone of Karen’s comment. She is a young woman in college who has made tremendous progress in her ability to write, but there is no place on our blog for disrespectful comments and we have always moderated these out.
Our hope as a non-partisan org is to present all points of view. I personally find it liberating and enlightening to understand how opposing viewpoints come to their conclusions. Doesn’t mean I agree. But I like to learn and constantly re-examine my own preconceived notions. It’s the best hope for women in reaching some semblence of unity IMHO.
Again, apologies for comment and we’re working on separating fact and opinions – both are fine – so long as we specify what it is!
Amy, many thanks for directly responding to me. I really do appreciate it.
I consider TNA an advanced feminist site and expect any front-page poster to be able to run with the big dogs or else stay on the porch. Callow youth may not yet have that ability and in the future, I’ll try to keep that thought in mind. In my work, I train young people in an exacting profession and I don’t do them any favors when I molly-coddle them, and as such, I may sometimes come across as very harsh.
It is of course your prerogative to grant a forum to whomever you choose, but as a teacher of graduate level students myself, I know there are some brilliant young feminists out there whose writing would do TNA proud. Given your connections, I can’t imagine those young women would be so hard to find.
As Henrietta said above, while this entry may not have been TNA’s finest, it did spark an interesting discussion, and for that alone I am heartened.
Leave your Response Want an avatar? Get a gravatar!
Community Room
February 22, 2012 at 11:22 am
February 17, 2012 at 2:39 pm
February 6, 2012 at 4:25 pm
January 30, 2012 at 2:36 pm
January 26, 2012 at 4:38 pm
January 23, 2012 at 1:04 pm
January 15, 2012 at 11:37 am
January 9, 2012 at 6:36 pm
BUILD your NETWORK
Our Network of College Women
Protecting our Teenage Girls
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Pioneer Mentors
Blogroll
Find us Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...