This week Time magazine had Jamie Lynn Grumet 26 breastfeeding her 3 year old son Aram on their cover and the media storm was the biggest load of craziness and caused the whole theme of the article to be lost.
Although I would love to discuss attachment parenting (what the article was about) the media feeding frenzy and the mostly unreasonable behaviour of the general public world wide was a lot more fascinating. Many commented on sites like twitter that it was disgusting, sick, perverted. I find it completely crazy that people should feel that way about what is essentially a natural thing.
In many non western countries it is the norm with many women having no choice to feed their children to ages 3 or 4 , and I myself have seen a woman breast feeding a child of around four. It seemed to be the most natural (might I even say beautiful thing) for them. They appeared to be completely comfortable and seemed to be very close and to have a loving relationship. I wonder sometimes why it has become a normal thing to feed our babies synthesized cows milks when we would never open a bottle of cows milk for them.
One of the reason that Jamie Lynn herself found this so normal was that in a time magazine article she said that she was infact bresat fed by her mother until she was 6 years old, so this is perfectly natural for her. She not only breast feed her natural child but also an adopted child which she says helped her build a close bond to him and helped him to feel comfortable in his new environment.
The most worrying thing about this response is that today many young mothers do not bresat feed their newborns as they find it disgusting. given all the health benefits for mother such as a safeguard for the mother from breast and ovarian cancers as well as getting mum back in her jeans super quickly and the benefits to the child’s immune system and and brain development shouldn’t we be putting breast feeding in a better light.
The vicious attack on Jamie Lynn is unfounded why do people amount what she is doing as some perverse act when there is nothing remotely sexual about breast feeding a child which only cements the bond between mother and baby. Although Jamie Lynn knew what she was doing when posing for the picture and that it would create a media storm, is there really any need for people to be demonising her for doing something that comes so naturally to many women.
some of the things that make breast feeding so hard for modern mothers is the lack of public breast feeding facilities. It is hard for a mother with a young baby to not feel self conscious when feeding in public with people (this includes women) staring. men also have a role to play in the problem with their “i want to stare at the boob that the baby is sucking” or the view that breasts are meant for looking at not babies.
From the media storm that she has created I don’t think Jamie Lynn has done any help to convince new especially young mums to breast feed. the comments that are widely available for people to see could stop some from trying it.
Although i have been preaching about breastfeeding it is a woman’s choice whether she breast feeds or not and if a woman chose’s do do it for longer that is considered normal in the western world this is 2012 and women should have a choice in if and how long she breast feeds for.
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