To the Editor:
Re “The Secret to Marriage Equality Is Formula,” by Nona Willis Aronowitz (Opinion guest essay, Feb. 6):
I take issue with Ms. Willis Aronowitz’s framing of breastfeeding as potentially kicking off “an undesirable, often stubborn imbalance between parents.” I am a millennial, a feminist and a mom with a demanding job. Breastfeeding my three babies over the span of the past seven years has required sacrifices, saying no to plans at times and, yes, lost sleep, but it has also been one of the great achievements of my life.
My husband has been a support at every step of my feeding journey, providing the assurance I needed to keep going, washing my pump parts, changing diapers and giving bottles of pumped milk when I needed a break. We should be telling moms-to-be that partnership equality can come in many forms and look different depending on the season of life.
For those who can, it’s an incredible privilege to be able to feed a baby from your body. More than how we feed our babies, we should be focusing on the societal systems that make partnership equality more challenging.
Samantha Slater Port Washington, N.Y.
To the Editor:
This essay argues that “exclusive breastfeeding and equal parenting are a zero-sum game,” and that parents should be told this explicitly “before they’re in the trenches.”
While I appreciate the author’s honesty, this framing risks replacing one oversimplified narrative with another. Formula feeding and combo feeding can be healthy, important options for many families, and those choices deserve to be normalized. But formula doesn’t create equal parenting — partners do. And breastfeeding doesn’t inherently cause inequality — lack of support does.
Most new parents aren’t lacking ideology; they’re lacking reliable information and practical support. They deserve accessible, expert-backed guidance from professionals like pediatricians, lactation consultants, maternal mental health clinicians and feeding specialists when needed — not sweeping conclusions that suggest that one feeding approach is the “secret to marriage equality.”
We need to appreciate nuance and prioritize informed, individualized decision making.
Monica Infante Rochester, N.Y. The writer is the founder and C.E.O. of Babies & Bumps, an organization that supports new and expectant parents.
To the Editor:
As a pediatrician and a mother of two working in London, I found that the article raises important issues around sharing the load of parenthood, but is needlessly antagonistic toward breastfeeding. Dismissing decades of important neonatal research as the “‘breast is best’ camp” and many of the benefits of breastfeeding as “tenuous at best” is simply misleading.
There is a wealth of reliable medical literature clearly demonstrating that breastfeeding is beneficial to both babies and mothers in numerous ways. Of course, the option of formula is a wonderful thing for many families, and parents should not be pressured to breastfeed if that is not the right option for them, but the proven medical benefits of breastfeeding should not be dismissed. In an age when basic scientific truths — for example, regarding vaccines — are constantly being undermined, this approach is frankly dangerous.
I have enjoyed the benefits of living in a country where I have been able to take up to a year of paid maternity leave. Perhaps the author should think more about the social and economic constructs that make breastfeeding so difficult for many women in the States. All people have a right to feed their babies in the way that works for them, but they also have a right to clear, unbiased medical information.
Sophie Pach London
Ethics and the Supreme Court
To the Editor:
Re “Justices Ask Employees for Secrecy Agreements” (front page, Feb. 3):
It is an obvious requirement of professional responsibility that Supreme Court justices’ clerks should maintain the confidentiality of the court’s business. Until now, they were trusted to behave appropriately, and now breaches of that trust have led the court to require express legal documentation of that responsibility.
It is, if anything, more obvious that the justices themselves should be subject to the highest standards of professional ethics, including the obligation to recuse themselves from any case that poses a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict. Remarkably, they have never had an express legal obligation to adhere to such standards.
Their imposition of express obligations on their clerks only highlights the fact that they themselves are still free of actual obligations, and suggests that they resist them. It is impossible to trust such a court as the ultimate arbiter of our nation’s laws.
Ron Meyers New York The writer is a lawyer.
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