Time magazine cover -- forget the breast, what about the boy?

Submitted by anthony on Fri, 2012-05-11 19:53

Article here. Excerpt:

'Jamie Lynn Grumet, the 26-year-old mother featured on the cover of Time magazine breastfeeding her 3-year-old son, has done more this week than become the poster woman for “attachment parenting,” the sometimes laudable movement that advises parents to be physically and emotionally available and responsive to their children. She has shown the limits of such a concept, and the ways in which it can be twisted into a bizarre, contemptible caricature of itself.
...
When he enters school later in his young life he may be ridiculed for it. And these realities hint at a woman who could (and I have not evaluated her) have very poor boundaries and be willing or likely not only to nurture a child, but to absorb him, deny him his personhood and render him no more than her appendage.
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The truth is that what Time magazine may have unwittingly captured and been party to was a grotesque form of psychological abuse—the parading into public of an intimate moment (intimate for mother and child) at the sole direction of that child’s mother, who didn’t stop to think that her child may not be able at the age of three to know what he thinks about the whole thing, much less to stop it, if he wanted to.
...

This is self-centeredness at its worst, sold as good parenting. And this is an act of media violence against a child, committed by adult journalists who also commandeered his will (as did his mother), for sensation and profit. Rarely do we get such evidence of how wrong parenting can go, how poorly journalists can behave and how slow we can be to recognize ugliness when it is disguised as something beautiful.'

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Comments

How out of touch with reality do you have to be?

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/jamie-lynne-grumet-defends-her-time-magazine-breastfeeding-180300346.html

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2012-05-12 00:54

Shame on the mother and shame on Time magazine for publishing it!

PS - I don't think there are any cut and dry rules about when to stop breasfeeding. But parents should never make spectacles of their children (like publicizing it on a national magazine cover in an unnatural pose) and should have some concern of cultural norms and future embarassment for the child.

Unless one lives in a third world country or in famine conditions, there is no nutritional reason to breastfeed children past one year. Although some children still need it for emotional reasons. As a parent your job is also to teach independence and coping skills, so I don't believe post one-year breasfeeding should be encouraged, but used as a parenting tool when/if the time calls for it as the child learns to cope on their own.

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Submitted by Kris on Sat, 2012-05-12 04:55

I think that it's a shame because I have read that most mothers nurture baby boys far less on average than baby girls. So it's sad to see it getting twisted into something gynocentric about extreme mommy trends.

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Submitted by dungone on Sat, 2012-05-12 19:04

"...most mothers nurture baby boys far less..."

I have read that a few times at MRA sites, usually saying that mothers don't breastfeed baby boys for as long as they breastfeed baby girls. I have never seen any evidence of this, so I am wondering if it just MRA mother-bashing that keeps getting repeated.

There are probably a FEW parents of both genders that treat sons and daughter differently to a fault. I can hardly find anything about it on the interenet and the few items I come across indicate it is fathers who are more nurturing towards daughters (but these are opinionated articles, not based on actual studies). I do not see it in my daily interactions with parents. I really don't think it is a widespread problem or that mothers are more guilty of this than fathers or vise-versa.

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Submitted by Kris on Sun, 2012-05-13 03:15

In my opinion this woman breast feeding this toddler in public is disgusting,but what she does behind closed doors is her own business.There are those that say this is a natural act,and why not ??...and I say "so is taking a leak,but people don't piss in the streets".

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Submitted by jazzman on Sun, 2012-05-13 04:01

I looked, and I can't find any statistics, so I am going to have to say that beyond just stuff that I know I had experienced (one person out of 7 billion), there is no proof for that statement.

And for sure sites like this need to focus on the truth, otherwise we end up like so many of the various special interest sites and we might even end up with laws dealing fair pay when there already is, or laws like VAWA.

But yeah though, that statement that most mothers nurture boys less, seems to be sort of made up. I would like to see some proof on that as well. I have dealt with too many fake statistics, and I do not like to see things like that. ~_~

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Submitted by Geredeth on Sun, 2012-05-13 13:02