My five-year-old Dragonet and her younger sister were discussing Snow White. They were talking about the Wicked Queen and I joined in to make the point that the Queen was jealous of Snow White.

"Yes," said my five-year-old. "She wanted to be the fairest in the land."
"Do you know what that means?" I asked.
"Yes." she replied. "It means that she wanted to share things out a bit more."

This story caught my eye just now, concerning a member of the band Supergrass who sleepwalked out of a first floor window and broke his back. Not because I'm especially a fan of Supergrass, but because I almost had a similar accident several years ago. I haven't walked in my sleep for some time, but I have been prone to do so in times of stress - this possibly accounts for my ability to get up and in to the room with a crying child in the night without actually waking properly until I get there. When I was 18, my best friend and I interrailed in Europe and although the experience was exciting and enriching, it was obviously stressful too, because a couple of weeks in, my friend woke me in the night and stopped me from opening the shutters of our youth hostel room. I was dreaming that we were trapped in a cellar and this was the way out: I remember vividly coming back to reality to find myself kneeling on the table under the window leaning against the shutters. My friend and I were very concerned by this, as the shutter catch wasn't very secure and was all that stood between me and a drop to the pavement outside. And we were on the fifth floor.

Needless to say, for the remainder of our stay in that particular room, we tied the shutters closed with string at night for added security. It makes for a good story, but it's a fairly terrifying thing if you consider the possible implications...

It's been over five years since my first child was born and although I am a sporadic blogger at best, I find myself surprised that I haven't before put finger to keyboard to compose a piece about my experiences of breastfeeding and my thoughts on the subject.

Some of my male readers may be deciding to abandon their reading of this entry now. I would ask them not to. Some of the issues I'm going to discuss relate to everyone because I'm intending to talk about attitudes to breastfeeding. I realise that, for some, the idea of talking about the natural child-rearing function of breasts rather than their sexual aspect may make them uncomfortable. I realise that some men will prefer not to think about this aspect of child-rearing which is something that they are mostly excluded from. Nevertheless, I would ask you to read on because there are some points that even men need to consider.

I currently have three close friends and one family member who are expecting children at the moment. For the three friends it is their first child. No doubt, over the coming months they will be ploughing their way through mountains of literature on such subjects as their baby's development, and the choices of pain relief during labour. One of the important issues that they will have to consider is the choice of how to feed their baby when he or she arrives - whether to breastfeed or bottlefeed.

The slogan that they may come across is "Breast is Best!" In an ideal situation, breastfeeding is best for baby and mother. Breastmilk alone contains all of the nutrients that a baby needs and the World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding exclusively (i.e. no solids and no supplements) for the first six months and to continue to offer breastmilk for up to the first two years. A newborn baby received protection through the mother's milk which boosts its immune system. Recent studies comparing breastfeeding and bottlefeeding found that breastfed children did better academically and were better adapted socially. Nutritionists have recently revised their baby weight charts to reflect the weights of breastfed babies which are lower weight than bottlefed babies. They now believe that the healthy weights are the breastfed ones, and the bottlefed babies are more likely to be overweight.

For the mother, too, there are many advantages of breastfeeding. A mother who breastfeeds her baby reduces her own chances of getting breast cancer by a significant percentage. She also regains her shape faster after the birth. Not to mention the fact that one can save around £400 a year by not buying formula milk.

Of course, if it were that simple, one would have to ask why anyone bottle feeds their babies. Let me run down a few of the reasons I've come across:

• breastfeeding hurts - initially, the nipples can get very sore and it takes a while (a few weeks in my experience) for them to toughen up. In this time it can be very painful breastfeeding and, believe me, tempting to pack it in;
• breastfeeding is exhausting - especially in the early days and weeks when you are tired after the pregnancy and tired after the birth, the last thing you need is to wake several times in the night and pump nutrients out of your body into a little child that has a tendency to fall asleep from the comfort of the warm milk and cuddle and needs to be woken so that they feed properly and (hopefully) sleep a little longer between feeds. As the recommendation is not to introduce a bottle, even with breastmilk in, for the first few weeks because the baby may not adjust properly to sucking on the breast, this isn't a task that the father can share in properly at this stage.
• breastfeeding is inconvenient - actually, I don't agree with this. How can it be less inconvenient to make up a formula mix with powder and water, put it in a bottle, heat the bottle in a pan (or if you're out, find a shop willing to give you a cup of hot water that you can stand it in), all the while comforting a squalling and hungry baby, than to find a quiet place to sit, lift up your top slightly (and it is possible to do this discreetly), and put the baby to the breast?

Despite the campaigning of the pro-breastfeeding lobby, there simply isn't enough support for mothers wishing to breastfeed. We are showered with information but it's sometimes difficult to find the relevant bits and sort the wheat from the chaff. For instance: some mothers find that their babies don't seem to get full up on breastmilk, they feel like they are feeding non-stop in the early days. Different babies have different feeding patterns, but there are ways to resolve this issue, other than the simple need to adjust to your baby's feeding rhythm, such as to find out if your baby is very windy - this may make them feel more full but then they'll need to feed again sooner. There's a necessary period of adjustment for mother and baby and each baby is different. My first dragonet fed for nearly an hour at a time, but left three hours between feeds. My second dragonet fed for ten minutes or so at a time, but fed hourly.

Mothers who are concerned that the baby is overly hungry sometimes worry that they are not producing enough milk (breastfeeding experts believe at least 98% of women - even those on nutritionally deficient diets in developing countries such as Bangladesh - can make sufficient milk to feed their babies, given proper advice and support). Often they will supplement the breastmilk with bottle milk to make the baby more full - often before putting them to bed, to help them to sleep through the night. The problem with this is that the baby doesn't suck properly on the breast because of getting confused with the different sucking action needed for a bottle.

Those mothers who find breastfeeding uncomfortable or painful can get help if they go to the right place (such as the NCT) where they will learn about different feeding positions that can prove more comfortable or easier. I'm sorry to say that you have to work at getting this help, however. With my first dragonet, I was incredibly sore in the first few hours, and before being discharged from hospital one midwife had offered to advise me during my next feed. She went off-shift, and when I asked the next midwife for help, her advice was to bottlefeed. I was horrified. (Fortunately I'm very stubborn, so I ignored her!)

I ought to have said this sooner, but I'm not passing judgment on mothers who choose to bottlefeed. I believe that there are many factors that have to be taken into consideration and each mother must do what she feels is best for herself and her baby. What concerns me is that there is not enough professional help and support for women making these decisions.

Which brings me to the developing world. There is an article in today's Guardian about formula milk in BanglaDesh. Formula milk producers (such as Nestlé) have been subtly pushing their product upon mothers in the developing world. This is illegal now so they market the product via health professionals instead. The point is, that many mothers in the developing world are advised to bottlefeed whenever there's a problem, or even if there isn't. The resulting problems for them are very serious. Around 70% of admissions at one hospital are infants, a great many of whom suffer from diarrhoea, which can be fatal in the developing world, and is a result of making up formula milk with dirty water. Almost no breastfed babies suffer from this.

The other consequence of the aggressive marketing of formula milk in the Third World is that familes are being beggared by the costs of buying something that is a poor substitute for breastmilk, which the mothers produce themselves and is therefore free. A family in the article that I have mentioned spends the equivalent of £2 a week on formula milk. They only earn £10 a week.

I'm not going to detail the aggressive marketing techniques of the formula milk manufacturs - read the article yourselves, there's enough detail there to shock. A couple of salient facts are in order, however:

• Save the Children believe that improving breastfeeding rates could cut infant mortality in Bangladesh alone by almost a third - saving the lives of 314 children every day. Globally, the organisation believes, 3,800 lives could be saved each day.
• In the developing world, Save the Children reckons that for every £1 spent in 2006-7 on breastfeeding promotion, £10 was spent by manufacturers on advertising and promoting baby milk and foods.

So what can we do? Firstly, our attitudes towards breastfeeding need to change. I don't care if it makes you uncomfortable to be reminded of the natural function of a woman's breasts, you need to make it easier for women to breastfeed wherever and whenever they need to. If a woman is breastfeeding in a shopping centre or in the corner of a restaurant, don't complain, be supportive.

New fathers, make sure that your wives or partners are getting all the support and encouragement that they need to breastfeed your babies. Sit up with them during the night feeds so that they're not alone. Get up and make them a hot drink. Do whatever it takes just to encourage and support them. Mothers - don't give up! Get help, demand help. It isn't easy but it is possible and, believe me, it's so rewarding in the end and it absolutely does get easier.

Finally, we can all try to call these multinational manufacturers of formula milk to account. Nestlé is not the only culprit, but they are certainly one of the largest and, as the inventor of formula milk, one of the longest offenders. There is an ongoing boycott of Nestlé products and I urge you all to join this boycott and take any opportunity that you can to make a statement about why you are doing this, so that we can spread the word.

Finally, to those of you who are still with me, thank you for reading!

This goes out especially to my beloved Dragon Dada!

My aunt is doing the Race for Life next month to raise money for Cancer Research. She's running in memory of her mother and my grandfather, both of whom died of cancer. Just on the off-chance that any of my readers are feeling incredibly generous, or in case this is a cause that they themselves support, her details are here if people want to donate.

Please don't feel under any pressure, though.

Thanks for reading this.

As a follow-up to my earlier post on anti-feminist language, I read a very good article in The Independent today about misogynist attitudes in the media. It's worth reading. It's written from a male perspective about the tendency in the media to vilify women, i.e. when there is a male criminal, label the woman in his life as a Lady Macbeth character. He traces this trend back to the story of the Fall in Genesis, which I can certainly confirm was made heavy use of in the Middle Ages when men wanted to find reasons to put women down.

I think it's so important to be aware of these attitudes so that we can avoid falling into them ourselves. I'm by no means saying that all misogynists are men. Plenty are women too, and here is the danger, going back to Ms Spender's arguments. There is a whole cultural mindset to be overcome.

There's another good article on the problems of equality in art, also in the Independent today. Joan Bakewell looks at the problems of redressing the balance in art galleries, given the lack of possibilities for female artists through history, which means the preponderance of male representations (not representations of males) in art galleries. The proliferation of female artists nowadays means that in modern terms they have equal opportunities - assuming that they receive the same amount for their paintings - but what can be done to redress the balance of the past?

Oh, and Mr Johns, the answer is absolutely. How can women receive equal treatment in the workplace if there is a need to differentiate between the genders?

I'm reading an amazing book called Man Made Language, by Dale Spender. It's about how our language forms the way that we think. Some of the points she is making are incredibly relevant and important and I wanted to share them with my readers.

For a long time women in our society have been struggling to be treated equally, to have the same rights and to be viewed in the same way as men. I really recommend the book to everyone. One of the main arguments that Dale Spender makes is that language affects the way that we think, and our language was created by, and controlled by men, and this has a detrimental affect upon how women are perceived.

She uses an argument that I have used for a long time, that in order to have true equality - in terms of perception - in terms of careers, that we need to stop differentiating between men and women in the job titles. So an actor can be a man or a woman. If you use the word actress then you are implying that a woman cannot be an actor, she is something different, something less than an actor. The same would be true for words like doctoress or lawyeress. Ok, those words don't exist, but waitress and manageress do. And, as Ms (I'll come to that in a moment) Spender points out, it is telling that were a job title doesn't have a specific gender indicator in the name, people add one: lady doctor, lady lawyer, female flight attendant. As long as we differentiate between the genders in the workplace, there can never be true equality.

Another point that Dale Spender makes is about the derogatory treatment of women in language. Her argument is that our language is structured to identify the male as a positive thing and female as a negative concept - a "minus male". One of the striking examples that she gives is the use of terms meaning female in our language. She uses the example that if an old woman were referred to as an old man, one would merely think this was a mistake. But if an old man were referred to as an old woman, this would be seen as an insult. She cites female titles and demonstrates how each has an alternative (generally negative) meaning: a queen is not only a royal designation but can be a way of referring to homosexuals who are very effeminate. Yet the word king has no other connotations. Courtier still means a man who lives and works in the royal court, but the female equivalent, courtesan now has almost exclusively sexual connotations. A lord is nothing but a lord, but the word lady can be used for a female of any rank now. Sir is a title of respect, but Madam is used for the owner of a brothel. Likewise, the word Master retains its original meaning while Mistress is used almost solely with a sexual meaning. Consider the difference between referring to your old master, or to your old mistress. There is a world of difference between the two. Consider, equally, the difference in respect accorded to a bachelor or to a spinster.

Another point that Dale Spender makes regards names. A strong argument for the fact of a patriarchal society is that women take men's names. In my studies, I have come across the idea in the Middle Ages that women were an effective way of forming bonds between men, and marriage was a form of transaction. By marrying my daughter/sister to this man, I form a bond between him and I. Yet this attitude hasn't entirely changed. I am sure that most men do not really view their women as a transaction, but why should it be normal that the woman has first her father's name and then her husband's. Worse still, Ms Spender argues and I agree strongly, when a woman loses her first name and becomes Mrs Jack Smith. Why should our identities be defined in terms of the men we are in relationships with? Dale Spender also argues convincingly for the use of the title "Ms". Now I have always been proud of being a "Mrs", but Dale Spender points out that this again is defining oneself in terms of a man. "Mrs," she argues, defines a woman as belonging to a man. "Miss" defines her as unmarried - not yet belonging to a man, or left on the shelf. Whereas "Ms" leaves her undefined: not "woman-with-man," not "woman-without-man." Just woman.

Now I love being married, and value my married status highly, but it is true, that I don't think people should judge my worth dependent upon whether or not I am married. The fact that I am married impacts upon my role as a mother, and it impacts upon my social availability - i.e. I am not available for dates. It has nothing to do with my intellectual capacties, or my ability to carry out a particular task. It has nothing to do with my ability to do a particular job. Furthermore, although I am quite happy to be part of my husband's family and I think it is helpful and probably important for us all to share the same surname, to reinforce the fact of our family as a cohesive unit, I find myself questioning why it should be, specifically, my father-in-law's name that we all share? It's a very nice name, and I have no problem with it or with the family, but why Dane and not Hibbert? Why can't we all have my father's name and all be Caseys? Or why can't we all have my mother's name and be Le Marchants? I deplore the idea that a family "dies" when there is no male heir to "carry on the name", but this is a fact of our society so long as we continue with the arbitrary abandonment of a woman's name upon marriage.

Is there a solution for me? Am I going to start calling myself Ms now instead of Mrs? I'm not sure. I'm not going to fight against being Ms anymore. And hopefully in a year I'll be Dr, and I'm damned well going to use Dr because that doesn't give any indication of my gender at all. As for the surname... well the problem is that whichever way I go, feelings could be hurt. My father understands me leaving his name for my husband's, but would probably not understand me leaving his name for my mother's. But why retain my father's name and not my mother's? And why ask my husband to abandon his surname if I will not abandon mine? We can hardly go quadruple-barrelled... that's bordering on the ridiculous. The nearest I have come to a compromise is giving our daughters a double-barrelled surname - they bear my father-in-law's surname and my mother's surname. When they are grown women they can decide which one to use, what they want to keep if they marry. I suppose that the most important thing that I can do is to make sure that they grow up questioning the "norms" and recognising that they have other options, should they so choose.

The final point I want to make, again from Ms Spender's book but also from my own experience, is that to be truely equal, we need a fairer recognition of workloads. Recently, some high profile divorce cases have centred upon the amount to which the former wife is entitled. Lawyers argue about whether or not she had any impact upon the creation of the husband's fortune and whether or not she is entitled to some of this. I strongly believe that more recognition needs to be given to women who stay at home. I am at home partly because I am studying but mainly because I have two small children. The choice to have children was a joint decision, and I believe that what is best for them is for them to have a parent at home when they are at home, for them not to be in childcare. I feel that it is crucial for me to be around during their formative years to impress upon them the values that I feel to be important, and to give them the one-to-one attention and stimulation that they might not get from someone who was not so intimately involved in their lives. This decision means that even when I have finished studying, I will not, realistically be able to get a full-time job. But I do have a full-time job. In fact more than full-time. I am fully responsible for the welfare of two small children. I keep a house clean so that they and my husband and I remain in good health. I prepare healthy meals so that they grow up healthy and well-nourished and so that my husband and I are well fed. I am teacher, nursery nurse, cleaner, and chef. I am a manager - I read through the paperwork, organise our finances, balance our bank statements, prioritise the paperwork that we have to do. I am the one who keeps tabs on when we need to do ironing, when washing loads need doing, when we need to shop, what we need to buy, what our children need, when we need to send birthday cards, when we need to buy presents. I am a manager. Do I get paid for any of this? No. Yet without me, my children would need another carer, my husband would be unable to work, there would be a greater burden on the health services. I get a measly tiny sum of child-support and, what is worse, I actually feel guilty at times for not contributing financially to the household. It's ridiculous. I should be receiving five salaries for the work that I do. And yet I feel a need to justify myself because I am "only a housewife" and prefer to describe myself as a "student."

To put it another way - these days studies point to the fact that the best advantage that you can give a baby is breastfeeding. I know this is not always possible, but it is even less possible if a woman is constrained, for financial or social reasons to return to work as soon as possible.

I know a great many men who are wonderfully supportive and who would never in any way wish to be sexist, who value and love the women that they know. I cannot believe that many men, based on those that I know well, would consciously wish any more for women to be treated inequally. To them I say that women can never truly be equal to men while they are defined in terms of their male relationships, given job titles that categorize them as "non-male", and do not receive the financial recognition that they deserve for the roles that they carry out in the home. We've come a long way, but there's still a very long way to go. We can make a start though, by changing the language that we use, particularly by stopping to use female epithets in a negative sense. Let's stop using "girly" as an insult.

I've noticed that my e-mailing habits have changed dramatically over the last few years. I suppose, to be completely honest, the turning point was having children, which is probably not so surprising.

Nevertheless, as one of the earliest of my generation to start e-mailing - I know e-mails had been around for a while when I started university but they hadn't hit the public consciousness in the way they have now - I find it interesting to look at how my approach to e-mails has changed.

When I first started e-mailing, it was really a novelty. I loved the instantaneousness of it, and, to be quite honest, the lack of cost! I was a student, with little money and a free e-mail account in college. In those days, everyone was entitled to an account, but they weren't that highly publicised and you had to go and enquire off your own bat to get one. Not very many people that I knew had e-mail... I nagged my friends to sign up in their universities and one or two did, but initially I was writing to the friends that I made through the e-mail system at my university.

At that stage, letter-writing as a way of keeping in touch was central to my mindset. I had moved schools aged 14 and had not the money to make regular phone calls so had sent lots of letters. When I began e-mailing, I saw e-mails as a faster and cheaper way of writing letters.

I used to play around too - writing fun stories for my friends and sending them as e-mail installments. Well... they were fun for me. I now imagine that my friends regarded them as a bit of a chore, but never mind.

As time passed, and almost everyone got e-mail, I began to think it strange when someone I knew didn't have this way of communicating. I also found I was less frequently in touch with those who didn't - or was it more frequently in touch with those who did?

Given the instantaneous nature of e-mails, though, my expectations of correspondence changed. Back then, I checked my e-mail whenever I was in King's, and sent out replies as soon as I received the e-mail... assuming I had enough time before a lecture. Any e-mails that were unreplied to I felt hanging over me until I had replied.

I could never understand people who didn't acknowledge or reply to messages. E-mails are so fast and easy, it seemed the height of laziness not to reply immediately.

When I look back at these attitudes I feel almost divorced from the Dragon I used to be. Having children, specifically looking after babies, and doing a PhD has taught me how precious time is. I still love to send long, letter-like e-mails to some people, and that is time-consuming, so I put off replies until I have the time to write a good one. Sometimes that means it's a month or more before I sit down to the task, which is terrible.

I have learnt to value the potential for quick e-mails, as a substitute for telephone calls. I love calling friends but I never know when it's convenient, and if it's just a quick query and I don't have the time to chat then an e-mail is marvellous for touching base. I don't like business phone calls so e-mail is a handy refuge there too. Of course, I know that e-mails are not a substitute for telephone calls, nor for face-to-face encounters. I also know that I would rather receive a letter than an e-mail, and imagine that a lot of people feel the same. But there just isn't always the time!

I also now understand why people don't reply immediately. As I said, I don't always have the time for a lengthy reply and so I wait until I do. But there's another reason too. I have come to suspect that for some people, being bombarded with e-mails is stressful as they feel under pressure to reply and are probably quite busy. For some friends and aquaintances, therefore, I judge it prudent to delay my reply for a couple of days at least, so that they don't feel that I'm expecting as speedy a response from them. Unfortunately, the couple of days then stretches into longer as I let e-mails build up and don't have time to deal with them all, until, every so often, the size of my inbox frightens me and I give up a couple of hours to write all those replies that are outstanding. A lot less instantaneous than it used to be. But at least my expectations are more realistic. I hope!

I'm going to a school reunion tonight. Well, it's a year-group reunion. I'm hoping it will be more worth the effort than the last one I went to. I'm reasonably confident that it will be, given that I loved this school, and hated the other one.

Anyway... much as I love my life, it's a little... well... conventional. I mean, married, singing in the church choir, PhD, two children... too good to be true for a Catholic girl at a Catholic school reunion? So I might jazz things up a little.... How does this sound for starters?

• I have seven children by eight different fathers;
• I dropped out of school at the age of 33;
• I currently live on a mountaintop in Peru, descending only once a year, in November, to stock up on elephant milk;

Do you think they'll believe me?

Any other suggestions?

Since January I've been singing with St Dunstan's Chorus, which is a choral group some 150-strong, run by the choirmaster from my church choir. The season starts in January and they put on a concert a week before Easter. It's my first year singing with them and I've joined the soprano section. It's been hard work, with two-hour rehearsals every Wednesday evening, but very enjoyable. I'm loving the challenge.

My reason for blogging today is that the details of the concert are now available and I wanted to make those public in case anybody was interested in coming to listen:

St Dunstan's Chorus - Concert

Performing Beethoven: Mass in C

with

Kenyon Emrys-Roberts: Organ Fanfare - Praise Our God
How Do I Love Thee?

Roger Quilter: Non Nobis Domine

at St Dunstan's Church, Heathside Crescent, Woking

Saturday 31st March 2007 at 8:00pm

Admission free - All welcome

There will be a collection in aid of Woking Hospice.