THE stories you hear. Campaigns promoting breastfeeding have been running for years, but some people still aren't listening.

Take the experience of one young woman I know, who was in a cafe near Glasgow breastfeeding her three-month-old when a sixtysomething at a nearby table shouted “Disgusting!” at her. Or the relative of mine who was asked to breastfeed her child at the back of a restaurant, so as not to upset the other customers. Or the Staffordshire woman labelled a "tramp" on social media after being snapped breastfeeding her eight-month-old outdoors (she defiantly organised a public breastfeeding event in response).

There’s no question about it, the UK still hasn’t caught up with the rest of the world where valuing and supporting breastfeeding is concerned, as a Channel 4 documentary broadcast this evening shows. The people hurling insults at breastfeeding women are in the minority, but they are the boorish few who express a more widespread societal unease. Culturally, we have a problem.

The latest statistics from 2016/17 underline it: there has been progress in breastfeeding rates but by the time babies are six to eight weeks old, still only 41% of babies are being breastfed. This means Scotland is trailing other countries worldwide. At 12 months, 60% of babies are being breastfed in Japan, 27% in the United States and in the UK? Half of one percent.

Does it matter? In a word, yes. It’s not that bottle-feeding is bad, by any means; just that it can never wholly replicate the benefits of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding, says UNICEF UK, boosts the immune system and helps protect the child against infections, asthma, diabetes, heart disease and cot death. It helps protect the mum against cancers of the breast and ovaries, as well as heart disease. There is also evidence that it leads to a small but significant improvement in brain development and IQ. NHS Scotland declares that improving breastfeeding rates would improve the health of mothers and babies, and reduce health inequalities. Many women love it just for its almost magical power to settle a fretting child.

That’s a lot of good stuff. So it’s great news that funding to encourage more women to breastfeed for longer is to be doubled. It’s just crucial that the money is used as well as it could be.

A lot of promotional material up until now has focused on mums themselves, which makes sense, but we know from oodles of research that women need support and positivity from those around them to persevere with it.

A lot of women find breastfeeding punishingly hard at times. Breastfeeding counsellors are a Godsend, but women need the help of their family and friends too. In fact, the experts say this is critical. If a woman is already feeling demoralised about breastfeeding, her husband, mother or best friend urging her to give up could make her do just that. Of course that advice is often driven by kindness and a woman has every right to make that choice, but if those around her are telling her to stop when they don’t understand the benefits, or worse, feel squeamish about breastfeeding, then they could be doing her and her baby a great disservice.

That’s why it’s time for breastfeeding campaigns to address the attitudes of society more broadly. The American Project Breastfeeding campaign featuring real dads and their babies with the strap line "If I could, I would", shows what could be done. We need some "Breastfeeding for dads" leaflets and "Ways to support your daughter" posters in British maternity wards.

Some early breastfeeding campaigns also made a cardinal error: they presented an idealised image of breastfeeding. This was breastfeeding Pampers ad-style: well-coiffured mums in ironed white blouses gazing lovingly at their peaceful offspring. The reality is more often a frazzled woman with unwashed hair in an old t-shirt pounding her heels into the bed as the baby latches on to her cracked nipples. Promotional campaigns need to be better at preparing women for the problems they could face, otherwise they could feel like abject failures to discover the reality isn’t quite as advertised.

Social scientists specialising in behaviour change have distilled a few basic principles. One is that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work so campaigns have to be multi-faceted. Another is that campaigns need to be aspirational, making the new behaviour seem appealing. This may be particularly important in breastfeeding where younger women are concerned, since they are less likely to breastfeed than older mothers. The process of making breastfeeding cool has already started, thanks to forward-thinking celebrities who have made a public show of breastfeeding, and innovative breastfeeding posters like Be A Star featuring an uber cool 25-year-old model breastfeeding her son.

The third behaviour change principle is that it should be as easy as possible. That's tricky, but being more honest about the difficulties women face would help.

Perhaps above all, we need to recognise that fixing the problem of low breastfeeding rates isn't just about changing women's attitudes but changing everyone else's too. Only when the woman across the restaurant smiles encouragingly will we truly crack this.