These are the baby bottle wars of New York

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/18/baby-bottle-wars-new-york

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You don’t get much for free in Manhattan, and so when life offers you the chance to spend two hours in a church hall learning how to breastfeed twins simultaneously – gratis! – by God you should take it. Even if you’re a man or don’t intend to have twins. Officially, the class, which I attended this week, was for new and expectant mothers and focused mainly on the 3D-geometry problem of how to service two newborns at once. There was a subtext, however, that stalks all early development classes: namely, the morality of what you’re doing with your baby, and to what extent others have the right to interfere.

In New York the issue is not breastfeeding in public. (A right, by the way, encoded in law, “irrespective of whether or not the nipple of the mother’s breast is covered during, or incidental to, the breastfeeding”.) It is hard to imagine a scandal of Claridge’s proportions kicking off over here – not because Americans are less prudish than Brits, but because breastfeeding in public is clearly just a scheduling issue, and if New Yorkers understand anything it’s the Primacy of the Schedule.

Instead, the problem is one of what lengths one should go to in order to avoid baby formula. So divisive is this issue that it can dictate which hospital you decide to deliver at. The hospital at New York University is known to be militantly pro-breastfeeding, so that if it’s not your bag, you are warned to expect hostility from nursing staff. Cornell, where I’m delivering, is highly medicalised and more likely to cut you a break if you reach for the bottle. Mount Sinai is so overstretched they couldn’t give a toss either way.

The leader of my breastfeeding group, a woman called Kate who looked like a retired folk singer and struck just the right note between mellow and authoritative, tried to push back against fanaticism, gently suggesting to one twin mother that waking three times in the night to pump milk was pushing her towards mental health issues. Breast might be best, but moderation is all. As for sticking to the schedule: “We try to say ‘routine’,” said Kate. “It’s a more forgiving word.”

The ex factor

One side-effect of the cost of living in New York is that couples wanting to divorce can’t afford to split the proceeds of selling their property and still hope to buy somewhere else each. As a result, odd accommodations are increasingly having to be made. I know two couples – one divorced, one in the process – who are forced to go on sharing a home. One ex-wife has made her husband move into the basement. The other pair try to overlap as little as possible, staying with friends and only moving back in when it’s their turn to look after their son, converting their house into a kind of timeshare property.

The New York Post ran a story this week citing the living arrangements of a “dynamic blonde mega-earner” and her new husband, plus her old husband in the guest room – all made to sound like characters from The War of the Roses. A psychologist was roped in to call it “unhealthy”, but there is, perhaps, something to be said for such arrangements, at least in the short term. The couples I know have been forced to be civil, while enjoying daily reminders of how right they were to split up in the first place.

Bringing up memories

One thing I miss about London is how lairy the streets get at this time of year. In New York people go to parties and get drunk, but there is no equivalent to the sheer sloppiness of London night buses a week before Christmas. This is, of course, just terrible expat nostalgia, and I need to nip it in the bud. Still, on the way home after dinner last night I didn’t see one person retching in the street and it seemed sad, somehow, and not very festive. Though not quite as sad as the fact that in certain parts of London, vomiting in public is less rude than feeding your baby.