Gillibrand focuses on parenting issues
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- June
- 15
Call her Senator Mom.
During an address last week, New York’s junior senator added another topic to her family-friendly agenda: breast-feeding.
“This is an important issue to me as the first woman to be nursing while a senator in the history of America,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told about 50 health- care professionals attending the first Summit on Breast-feeding in Washington.
Parenting issues have been a theme for Gillibrand since her appointment to the Senate in January.
Her first bill was a proposal to eliminate the $25 administrative fee charged to single parents who seek enforcement help collecting child support. And this year, she wrote President Barack Obama expressing support for a nurse visitation program to provide low-income women with parenting instructions and to encourage them to breast-feed their babies.
Gillibrand says such issues are part of her “families first” agenda, which includes her advocacy for job creation.
“It’s been an extraordinary pleasure and privilege to be a mom and to raise two children,” she told the audience at the breast-feeding summit. “And I do think a lot of my work I do in the Senate is very well informed by my experiences as a mother.”
Thursday’s event marked the 25th anniversary of the first U.S. surgeon general’s workshop on breast-feeding. It gave experts a chance to assess the nation’s progress as well as setbacks. More than 40 percent of new mothers breast-feed now, compared to fewer than 20 percent in the early 1990s, but the percentage of women who mistakenly believe infant formula is as healthy as breast milk is on the rise, according to statistics cited Thursday by an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mothers who nurse are less likely to develop diabetes or become obese, the advocates attending the summit noted. And children who are nursed during their first year of life not only are less likely to get sick during that period; they are less likely to develop certain chronic illnesses later in life.
Many of the presentations were academic. But Gillibrand took a first-person approach.
Nursing her 1-year-old son, Henry, has been a logistical challenge for the 42-year-old lawmaker, who sometimes rushes home to an apartment in northern Virginia between weekday votes in the Capitol.
On weekends, it’s even more difficult because she must travel around New York to get acquainted with local officials and constituents, most of whom knew little about Gillibrand when she was a House member, before her appointment by Gov. David Paterson.
Gillibrand said a support group that includes her mother, sister and girlfriends played a key role in her decision to continue nursing. She nursed her older son, Theo, until he was 9 months old.
Gillibrand said having young children has helped her focus on issues such as dangerous chemicals in baby products. She’s the sponsor of a bill directing the Food and Drug Administration to investigate the use of chemicals in personal care products.
During her speech last week, Gillibrand also announced she signed on as the Senate sponsor of a House bill, introduced by Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York City, to require health insurers to cover fertilization treatments for couples trying to have children.
The infant formula vouchers provided by the Women Infants and Children program are viewed with disdain by breast-feeding advocates such as Dr. Ruth Lawrence of the University of Rochester School of Medicine, who led the summit.
The program provides vouchers for expensive infant formula, but the substitute vouchers nursing mothers get are worth only the equivalent of one jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread.
There’s no reward for breast-feeding, even though a baby who’s nursed generates lower health-care costs, Lawrence said.
That was news to Gillibrand.
“But that would be a very significant concern for me,” she said. “I would prefer that they not be penalized for nursing. Moms who are nursing really need to have fruits, vegetables and healthy dairy products in order to be able to produce high-quality milk.
“It’s certainly something I will look into,” she said.
This entry was posted
on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 7:32 am by Brian Tumulty.
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