Can A Husband Tell His Wife That She Has To Breastfeed?

Formula, Breastfeeding, and the Burden of Feeding the Baby

They want to switch to formula because they don't want to bear the load of feeding this baby themself. Okay. And so it's more just about like, if we switch to formula, you can help out, you can help feed the baby.

You can be like, there's no reason for me to get up in the night and feed the baby. Whenever the baby's hungry, we can share the load. And it's like, yeah, but I mean, if he's, if he's working a full-time job and you're expecting him to get up at night and feed this baby because now you've switched him over to formula or whatever.

And like, he could lose his job and you guys could lose your house.

Whether a Husband May Tell His Wife to Breastfeed

All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is, can a husband tell his wife she has to breastfeed? Just a, just a yes. No apologies, no qualifications anywhere in there. Uh, you know, no groveling or, or begging for forgiveness.

Just, just a yes.

Yeah. I mean, it seems perfectly reasonable to me.

All right, Tim, I'm going to ask the question again. I'm going to give you a second chance to, to insert your qualifications and apologies. Can a husband tell his wife she has to breastfeed? Yeah. All right.

All right. I think, uh, so you're saying yes, you're saying yes. You have no problem saying yes. You have no problem leaving out any sort of, um, you know, uh, qualifications, nothing. You have, you don't have anything like that in your answer, but I think if you were to ask most people this question, especially most women, whether they're married, unmarried, have kids, don't have kids, I think they would all, and really men too, husbands, um, you know, unmarried men, they would probably all have the same response that this is kind of like a, um, as a man, this is a, this is, you've entered a realm that you don't have any real expertise in and therefore you are not allowed to weigh in, you know, on the decision, weigh in on the conversation at all.

May, I mean, maybe you're allowed to weigh in a little bit on the conversation if you're kind of leaning more towards the, towards the, yeah, you don't have to breastfeed side is like a, uh, check for someone's conscience maybe.

But, um, I think this is just one of those questions where you're just as a, as a man, you're not really allowed to have a say, let alone say you tell, you know, tell your wife, you must breastfeed our child.

But then you're saying, yes. So, so why do you have such a different response to that question than most people?

I mean,.

The vast majority of women throughout the history of the world have breastfed.

Children and wait, hang on. You're saying Eve didn't have formula.

They didn't have formula. So, I mean, you know, before formula was invented, this, this conversation was really, um, just kind of a, this is like the birth control conversation in a certain sense. And that before the advent of birth control, everyone had certain expectations that certain things would happen.

Uh, so, you know, before birth control, everyone expected that you get married and the first thing you do make your first act of marriage is the act of attempting to make a baby. Well, in a similar way, you know, before the advent of formula, the vast majority of women throughout the history of the world have always, you know, been expected to feed the baby.

In fact, God's designed their bodies to feed the babies. And so, you know, related to this in general, there, there, there is a very real, a very real, um, uh, discussion about like what should be considered normal.

So, so part of the difficulty with this question is there's several things that are happening at once here. One is that there's an expectation that if you ask a question like that, people will instantaneously kind of expect you to make a bunch of endless qualifications instead of treat it as a generality.

So part of this is a generality discussion and I'm just answering it as a generality. Um, so as a generality, yeah, man, obviously can say that to his wife. There's plenty of situations where a man should can and should say exactly that to his wife.

And there may be some, you know, difficult situations that come along where you have to figure out what to do. Um, when things don't go as planned, but then there's, you know, many people have this like kind of absurd expectation that when you're encounter a question like this, you instantaneously make the rule to conform to every any and every hard situation that can come about.

But that really isn't very reasonable. Um, tough cases don't make good for good rules. And in general, you need to just answer questions like this, you know, as you would answer them in 95 of the situations that come along.

So my wife and I, um, we, um, when we had our first son or when she had her, you know, when she had our first son, um, one of the things that happened was immediately he was airlifted by a helicopter to a hospital in town and put it in the NICU for about a week.

And that really kind of threw a wrench in the plan of breastfeeding for our first child. And it made it, I mean, made it really hard to do that. So our first child was a formula baby. And despite all that, I still am answering yes, because like the vast majority of people today are not having their babies airlifted by helicopter, right?

And I see you for a week. So that's a pretty rare situation to happen. And you know, though, you can handle those cases, you know, cases on a case by case basis. So like what you need to do is just talk about just normal, everyday, obvious expectations that, you know, situations that should be happening, not the rare exceptions in general.

So part of this is a generality discussion. Part of it's a my body, my choice kind of discussion, like woman's bodily autonomy. So it feels like a man is overstepping his authority by asking a woman to do something with her body.

But that's just, that's the product of feminism. I mean, first Corinthians tells us that, you know, wife does not have authority over her body, but the husband does. And the husband doesn't have authority over his body, but the wife does.

Now that's spoken of in a sexual context, but this kind of absolute bodily autonomy kind of idea, that's not present in the Bible. You know, like that's not the way marriage works where marriage is a one flesh relationship.

Right. And there isn't this like a you stay in your lane guy kind of, kind of thing. And so, you know, beyond that though, I mean, I think there's plenty of practical situations that plenty of people could imagine to think about why a husband might be well within his authority to ask his wife to breastfeed, assuming she's able, assuming that she's you know, doesn't have some kind of like significant problem.

Like the one I've described before. There's a lot of things that can make this like a, like, like a wise discussion, like a discussion about, you know, the wisest course of action for a family over and against just being like a pure preference kind of issue, where it's just something that a husband arbitrarily decides irrationally to ask his wife to do for no good reason whatsoever.

Breastfeeding, IQ, and God's Design

So, I mean, there's been a lot of IQ studies as it relates to this topic. And it's difficult to know what to make of them because, you know, there's a lot of money in formula, obviously. But there's been a lot of IQ topics that basically are a lot of IQ studies that have been done that basically say that, you know, a baby who's been breastfed will have a higher IQ over the course of his life than a baby who isn't.

And so there's mixed studies on that. You know, every few years, it goes back and forth, but that's something to think about. Is there something about God's design here? Did God design babies to be fed by their mother?

And are there benefits that are even long-term in that way? That's a very real discussion that could be have. And I don't know if it's something you necessarily want to risk if the science is, if you don't have to, right.

If you don't have to, and the science is up in the air about it. And you, you know, you can imagine why there's a vested interest in refuting it. Right. But then it seems like there's a lot of studies that are showing it.

So, you know, that's something to consider on the one end. On the other end, I mean, you have all the carnivore people who are basically saying that if you want to turn your baby into an effeminate boy, then an effeminate man, you know, you give them the soy formula.

So there's something to be said there. I mean, if you really, I don't know what to make of that. I haven't looked into that very much. I just like to mention it as a joke,.

But turning your baby into a soy boy.

Yeah, I think it's funny, but I mean like that's something though, that I don't instantaneously dismiss as a possibility because I mean, the reason why I don't instantaneously dismiss this possibility is because obviously if God designed women to feed their babies with their bodies, I am suspicious of the fact that we've gotten to a point now where we can absolutely replace that.

Does that make sense? Yeah, maybe we can, but I don't think we, I mean, um, our first born son who was, you know, given formula, he would spit up the formula nonstop. Um, like he was just like a, like a vomit launcher kind of baby.

And we tried every single formula imaginable, uh, with that and no fountain everywhere you go. But then, um, yeah, like I, with all with the, with the rest of our babies who were breastfed, it wasn't a problem, you know?

So I, I'm not, I don't think that we've got it down yet. Okay. Yeah. Um, they kind of think we've got it down yet just by virtue of a simple observation like that. So now whether or not it has longterm, um, consequences, I don't know, you know, and I, and I don't, I don't treat these discussions like an emotional way.

So if you're asking me a question like this, I'm not thinking about it in terms of emotion, in terms of people's feelings, I'm thinking about it in terms of reality. You know, uh, my, my oldest son is very intelligent, but could it be that if he were breastfed, he would be even more intelligent?

I'm open to that possibility and it doesn't offend me in any way. And I don't feel guilty for him being in the ICU for a week and throwing a wrench in those plans either. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah.

Yeah. But then if you knew that you could, that that was true, it seems smart to act on it. Do you get what I'm saying?

Wisdom, Stewardship, and Practical Reasons to Breastfeed

Yeah. Like, um, I think basically what you're saying is, Hey, like there, I get, there's not technically some law in the Bible that says, you know, thou shalt breastfeed. Right. But then, but then you do kind of have to ask yourself, well, um, basically why not?

Right. Right. And so, so what you're doing then is you're putting it in more of a, um, a wisdom category where there is room for the person who, for, for one reason or another, just legitimately cannot breastfeed.

Right. So there's still room for that person. But then you ha you do have to ask your, but then you are asking yourself like, well, am I actually making the best decision, um, uh, for my child and all of this.

Right. So you have the intelligence kind of discussion. You have the, you know, the soy boy kind of discussion. I mean, but then there's a lot of other things that factor into this as well. I mean, one is just simply money, you know?

Yeah. So, I mean, early, early on in our marriage, we didn't have a lot of money to be buying formula. I mean, you're about as broke as you're going to get when you start out like your life as a married couple for the first time, like formula is very expensive.

Right. So when you add all the formula that you have to add with baby, we add all the diapers you have to have with baby, like this stuff starts to add up and there might be plenty of couples who just don't have the money to, um, don't have the money to use formula.

And you know, it might be that like, that's a significant source of conflict between the husband and the wife, because the wife is just lazy and unwilling to breastfeed. The baby doesn't want to deal with it and would rather just have the convenience of formula.

And the husband's looking at her and saying, I can't afford this, you know? So, you know, I mean, now she can look at him and say, we'll get a better job and all that. But I mean, you, you know, it is what it is.

A lot of couples don't start out with some wonderful, remarkable plan. And like, you know, the husband who basically says we can't afford it, that is a relevant and relevant factor here. Right. Right.

And if your body is designed to do this and your body has been designed to do this, like, uh, by God, and you know, the vast majority of women throughout the history of the world have done it without complaint and you're unwilling to do it because you don't want to, that doesn't reflect very well on you.

Okay. Right now, now you turn around for a play. You say, well, Hey, it doesn't reflect very well on the man that he's not able to provide enough to where this is not a thing. It's like, okay, yeah, fine.

Sure. But I mean, they may have went into marriage, both of them wanting to get married early and being willing to do what it takes. Right. Right. To make it happen, even though they didn't, um, you know, have their, um, they're not like 10 years into a stable career post college and everything else.

But like, that's a very real thing. Like to say, Hey, we don't have money for this right now. Okay. Like we had all these new baby stuff we're having to buy. We don't have the money for it. So like, that's the discussion too.

And I also think another discussion that's related to this is that there's a lot of ladies who are not as devoted, uh, young mothers who are not, like they don't make them like they used to. And, um, like meaning there's a lot of young mothers who are just not, um, like they want to switch to formula because they don't want to bear the load of feeding this baby themselves.

Okay. And so it's more just about like, if we switch to formula, you can help out, you can help feed the baby. You can be like, there's no reason for me to get up in the night and feed the baby. Whenever the baby's hungry, we can share the load.

And it's like, yeah, but I mean, if he's, if he's working a full-time job and you're expecting him to get up at night and feed this baby, because now you've switched him over to formula or whatever. And like, he could lose his job and you guys could lose your house, you know?

Meaning like, you know, if he has a job that requires him to drive a lot and he's just dead tired and kind of getting a wreck because he's up all night with the baby, like you can, you can be at home and you can kind of take naps when the baby takes naps and you can, you can handle that sleep deprivation in a way that a person who has a eight, you know, nine, eight to 10 hour shift, they have to do and concentrate what they're doing and have a brain that's functioning, what they're doing.

Like, like you can build a load differently if you're at home in a house, not having any outside things to do than you can when you have a job to do. And so I think there's a lot of practical like decisions that are affected with this kind of thing.

And a lot of conflict that couples can have over this topic to where, you know, if a husband is just looking at his wife for any of those four reasons and saying we need it, we need to breastfeed. Okay.

Then he's, whatever he's done, and he's not asked her to do anything that the vast majority of the women throughout the history of the world have willingly and joyfully done. Okay. Right. So, yeah. So whatever is happening there, like you can, um, um, everyone can just view it in like a selfish way.

Right. I don't want to deal with this. It's a lot more easy. It's a lot more convenient. But then if you're thinking like, if you do have very real reasons why you think, Hey, this is actually might be better for the baby longterm, then Hey, like asking your wife to sacrifice for the baby.

That's not criminal, right? If it's better for the family, like the rhythms of the family and asking your wife to do what she's designed to do, you shouldn't feel any guilt whatsoever in that at all.

Closing Encouragement and Podcast Sign-Off

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