The government recommended last month that new mothers should give their babies only breast milk for the first six months of their infant's life. The benefits of doing so were manifold it said. Babies who are breast fed have a lower risk of gastro-enteritis, respiratory and ear infections, and of becoming obese later in childhood. They may even experience an improvement in their IQ levels - particularly if they were born prematurely.Central to these recommendations is the concern that only 50 per cent of mothers in social class V breastfeed their babies initially, compared with over 90 per cent in social class I. After four months the number of mothers still breastfeeding had fallen to 26 per cent in social class V, but only to 63 per cent in social class I.Most of us would agree that it seems like a great idea to encourage more mothers to breast feed their babies. But this is surely idealism in an age when the financial reality for most new mothers means that they have to go back to work sooner rather than later (whether they want to or not). Crèches are few and far between and expressing milk is hardly an activity unobtrusively done at the office desk. The sentiment is a good one, but will it merely compound the guilt that many working mothers already feel?Wider attitudes to breast feeding women also need to change if this campaign is to be successful. Stories such as that of the nursing mother who was forced to drink three bottles of her own expressed breast milk before being allowed to board her flight because guards at the JFK International Airport thought that the milk might be a "dangerous" substance exemplify the kind of ridiculous ignorance about breast feeding that still prevails.