Neanderthal Lady Who Probably Weaned Her Kids Really Late
(I posted a similar version of this at Huffington Post here.)
There’s a lot of drama going on at TIME about ‘extended’ breastfeeding and whether the cover photo of a gorgeous blond mother nursing a three-plus year-old was such a great idea. Oh, how can I count the ways this bothers me? Let me start with this:
Why are we so quick to criticize ‘extended breastfeeding’ when we have no such impulse to crack down on the myriad negative ways that adults fuel their own oral fixations? Where’s the anxiety about “extended” use of alcohol, tobacco, illegal and prescription drugs, and unsafe sex and food?? I don’t think mothers who practice extended breastfeeding are narcissistic creeps and molesters. I don’t think a lot of the children who love breastfeeding are maladjusted weirdos; they just really love nursing and find it comforting in the same way that a lot of kids find thumbs and blankeys and transitional objects comfortable because, let’s face it, childhood is scary and stressful for many (and maybe most) kids. Why add shame on top of the list of things a young child has to worry about?
Any nursing mother knows you can’t force a child to breastfeed if she doesn’t want to. It’s like forcing someone to urinate. So why do we care about the tiny number of young children who, for reasons of biology or circumstance, have above-average soothing needs and a mother willing and able to indulge them? Why should we care if someone’s breastfeeding habit has gone on longer than a nosy neighbor might find appropriate? My neighbor’s drug-buying habit has gone on longer than I find appropriate!
My point is that grownups have a lot “self-soothing” habits that, unlike extended breastfeeding, can cause widespread and costly societal harm. The CDC estimates that 75,000 deaths annually are caused by alcohol, ranking third after preventable deaths from tobacco and poor diet. And that estimate is based on a level of drinking that many would consider merely a pleasant habit. Maybe if adults were less judgmental about breastfeeding mothers, and instead focused on the hypocrisy of their own oral fixations — smoking or drunk driving, for example, or hiring a sex worker for a blowjob without a condom, or even just eating way too many cheeseburgers – they might feel less inclined to criticize very young children for acting like, heaven forbid, babies?
Your position on this is so reassuring, not because I have even the remotest expertise in the area, but because you aptly address the fact that in life there will always be people who find our behavior(s) inappropriate and are willing to say so. If moderation in all things is good, so is restraint in public discourse. I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed a mother publicly breastfeeding a child who strikes me as “too old for that” but when I do, I hope I recall your balanced interpretation. It would certainly never dawn on me to say anything – it isn’t as if I were witnessing child abuse.
I think what I found most disturbing about the picture in Time (and the resulting outcry) is that the picture is NOT of “breastfeeding”. Anyone who did (probably quietly) nurse a child into their toddler years (I nursed one of mine until she was about 32 months) is doing this by holding their child on a couch or chair or bed, with their arms around their child and the child cozy against their mother. They are NOT standing in a vaguely sexual pose, with their makeup and hair done, and their child on a step-stool. The photo was strictly sensational – and does not show the reality of a loving act of nurturing and caring.
In addition – for what it’s worth – I never thought I’d nurse a child who was almost 3! But it’s a whole different thing once you get there; at that point, breastfeeding is done in the context of that relationship. But most people would not ever have known – we nursed at home, in the morning or before bed, and not all day long. It wasn’t a “secret”, and I didn’t feel like it was a burden, because it also had changed from nursing a newborn (where you really are tied to a child, 24/7).
Nursing turned out to be a joy – and one that I was glad to have. When my child self-weaned, she did so with confidence and readiness for the next thing. That’s a gift that I’m glad that she and I both experienced.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I hated that photo for exactly the same reasons. I, too, breastfed my (third) child longer than I’d expected. She was very colicky and her early infancy was stressful but breastfeeding was always so positive and I couldn’t see the point of interrupting it unnaturally when she wasn’t quite ready. Like you, I didn’t hide the fact, nor did it define my daughter in any way. In fact, she was very independent at two, yet seemed to need/want nursing as a bedtime ritual and, frankly, it was easier on me, felt more natural and just less stressful than the endless round of rituals I’d tried to get my older kids to fall and stay asleep with ease. Anyway, I didn’t – and don’t — see what the issue was in just doing what felt right for our family. My daughter was down to one or two nursings a day by 12 months but continued until she was two (or a little after.) There was little nutritional value at that point and it was no big deal. Yet I heard after the fact that certain friends/family felt I had difficulty “separating” from my child because she was my last baby etc.. It still makes me laugh. I look back on that stage of life with great joy because it was such a special experience, and yet in some ways it was also such a small part of her (and my) life – and it puzzles me that people react with such emotion to it. But I guess why should be surprised that food and breasts push people’s buttons? I’m sure I would have weaned her earlier or she would have weaned herself earlier in different circumstances. Who cares?!
Thanks for writing this. I was a La Leche Leader, and I nursed 2 of my 4 daughters longer than even my mother or their husbands know. It’s too small a sample size, but they both were valedictorians, had perfect SAT scores, and went to Yale and then Harvard. I could spend the next 3000 words bragging about their accomplishments. All 5 of my young grandkids nursed into toddlerhood, even though their mothers worked almost full-time.
I hated the photo because all the long-tern nursers I have known (and I have known many) breastfed only at naptime or bedtime once they were two or so.
Our society’s hangups about sex are never so embarrassingly evident as when people freak out about breastfeeding.