Breastfeeding in public can still be a contentious issue

The UK has the lowest rates of breastfeeding at one year

Yes, that’s right – the UK has the lowest breastfeeding rates at one year old of any country in the world.

Yes – any country in the world.

It is amazing….

While totally recognising that for some women, breastfeeding just doesn’t work, there is a lot of evidence that society pressures of various kinds lead many women to stop breastfeeding long before World Health Organisation guidelines suggest they should. The pressures are many and varied and can include disapproval experienced or perceived when breastfeeding in public; peer group issues, concern about the shape of their breasts after feeding, fitting in with a return to work, getting fed up with staying indoors because of a fear of being “looked at” in public, or indeed being told to cover up, or even to take their baby to the toilet to feed.

So many issues can get in the way of a woman giving her baby the best start in life.

Taboob! grew out of a long-imagined photography project that had been in my head for maybe ten or fifteen years, never coming to life. It’s coming to life was the result of participating in a series of courses with Landmark, an amazing personal development curriculum. During one session of the Advanced Course, we were discussing reality agreements; that which society, in various ways, and for various reason, deems acceptable, and suddenly this fine art project came crashing into my head and emerged as Taboob – a project about mothers and their babies going about their everyday lives, and not the fine art images I’d been thinking of. And within four months, the first part of Taboob had come to fruition and was hanging on the walls of the wonderful Flirt Cafe Bar in Bournemouth.

So I said the first part. The first part because this is only the beginning and I have many many ideas about how to take this work forward, with more exhibitions in other venues, and hopefully a permanent exhibition somewhere too. So many of the women are passionate about the cause that they want their images used widely so submissions to picture agencies are planned, as are many other ways of showing this beautiful activity as the normal everyday activity it is.

If you would like to be involved with Taboob, either as a mum with your baby for a photo session, or you have a cafe or venue and would like to host an exhibition, or possibly you would like to sponsor a permanent exhibition, or you want to buy or use the images in any way, please get in contact now.