I’m so excited about this Time magazine cover! Bravo to them, [and to the young woman], for having the guts to print it. It definitely got my attention. This young mother is sexy as can be. Not the way we most often think about the nursing mom. Mom is to be appropriately covered and, well, how should I put this, motherly. The child should be an infant; if they are to meet the standard of purity expected, required even, for a woman to get away with nursing her child. And God forbid she nurses said child in public. Like menstruation, menopause, and the bloody details of giving birth, these are all things women keep to themselves. Many times even from each other.
So here we have this vibrant young mother with her toddler son holding her nipple in his mouth. Very provocative indeed. I wonder would the reaction be different if the child was a female?
The Doc that’s behind the thinking being promoted in the article is pushing attachment parenting. He talks about babies and toddlers being plugged into mommy as much as possible in order to be emotionally healthy. I’m not sure how I feel about this as I don’t think we have enough truly connected men to support that process. What I mean is men who come home and [happily, willingly] do housework, laundry, cook and babysit so she can work, play, or whatever she needs to do to remain vital as a being separate from her child. A man who will, as the commercial once said about women: Bring home the bacon, fry if up in the pan, and, in this case, never-never let her forget she’s a woman. Many times a married woman with children ends up being no more important to her man than the couch he falls into at night.
That’s in part why it’s hard to ignore this photograph. This woman is hot. Not an easy one to ignore or put into a clean little mommy box where she becomes completely non-threatening. What do we do with that? Looking at the image made me get a tiny tingle in my groin and I’m a heterosexual mom who nursed her children.
In thinking about the concept of attachment parenting, the picture gets much bigger for me. I think of male children who at a certain age are encouraged, almost threatened, by other males, and some females, into rejecting their connection, attraction, and emotional need for their mother. Which in turn ends up being a deeper rejection of all females for anything other than sex. Which in truth requires that they reject a large part of who they are innately. Females who observe their mothers in these “less than” roles, where many times they become invisible, then end up rejecting mom, and therefore themselves, too.
In thinking about it from that perspective, assuming that the woman is fully supported by a male [or female] partner if she chooses to have one, this movement could be a real opportunity for WOMAN to reclaim her real and innate power as a FEMALE.
I think enough years have passed now to prove that we as women can in fact do almost anything a man can do. Many times better in fact. Deep down though I am wondering how many women still want to? How many are really satisfied by it? I myself am more interested in what a truly empowered FEMALE looks and feels like. It’s pretty obvious that we aren’t there yet as the women in this country are more divided than we’ve ever been. I myself am getting tired of the ’it’s all the man’s fault’ excuse. Come on. Really?
It seems to me that the liberation process for women, [as we have known it thus far], has cut far to many women off from who and what they truly are. I know I’m making a loaded statement here as women like to believe, and tend to back each other up in, we got it all covered. But I don’t see that as true. I see many highly masculinized women. Women who look the part, with or without silicone boobs popping out of their Victoria’s secret bras, like a fruit from a cornucopia, yet, they think, and lack connection to what they feel, very much like men. In fact to be anything other than that, is to risk being thought of as a wishy-washy emotional weakling, who insults her warrior sisters. The women who believe themselves to be the trailblazers of our freedom.
I wonder if this budding new movement might not be the beginning of something new for women, and men. The end of images that do not serve the whole of humanity. Something deeper, richer, than the women and men from The Stepford Wives, Desperate Housewives, and even Sex In The City. Women and men, who have the courage to surrender what doesn’t truly serve them, and the whole. The tenacity to not back down and fall into old roles that no longer work.
Related articles
- Time’s Breastfeeding Cover is Pure Shock Value, No Substance (alternet.org)
- The Time Cover: An Example of Why I Hate the Mommy Wars (mominthemuddle.com)
- Are You Mom Enough? Really? (thebeverlyhillbabies.com)
- VIDEO: Why I Breast-Feed My Toddler (abcnews.go.com)
Provocative article but then I guess most people would find the picture so. My first impression when i saw the cover was “Interesting”. No distaste in it just interesting. But given my feelings about personal liberty, the only way i would find myself objecting without having the stink of hypocrisy about myself was if the child was being held by force or if I heard that he was screaming “No mama, I don’t want it anymore” But I believe I can safely assume that that was not the case
I agree with you completely here. I think it is a very personal issue. I also think it’s key that women who are outside the “norm” [whatever that is], boldly speak out about their truth. We are diverse, as are all other mammals in nature, regarding these type things.
Yea interesting…my only thing, the kid looks kinda too old…but I’m all for breastfeeding if you are up to it.
Nice interesting post!!!
Thanks!
I think it is up to what is comfortable for each woman, child, family.
Absolutely!!!
I’ve always considered myself a liberated male who has long accepted that women are generally superior to men in most ways, but I must admit I thought this picture a bit disturbing, which was obviously the publishers intent. Say what you will, females are not designed to nurse children this age. In nature, the female would already have produced at least two more babies after the fellow in this photograph. I haven’t read the article and might be speaking out of turn, but my concern is that this can’t be good for children. In nature, the healthiest babies are those that are weaned the quickest. We need to be concentrating less on Mom’s ego and more on the welfare of our children.
Interesting comment CC. Thanks.
A couple questions. Who exactly says women are not designed to nurse three year old children? And when you speak on “In Nature” what are you referring to. That would mean this woman would have a baby a year. What mammal does that?
It is interesting to note that chimps and gorillas nurse for 4-6 years.
Some of these facts are not quite right. In nature, quickly-weaned babies are not the healthiest. Women ARE designed to nurse. It is “natural” and that is why her body is still making milk. Simple natural law of supply and demand. Thank god nature made a plan for times of scarcity and in places where there is not a lot of food, the future depends on breast milk. In nature, this is a great natural birth control method because it’s less likely she’ll conceive again while nursing and if food is scarce, she’ll need some natural birth control. True, these two do not look hungry. But that’s another issue and it’s certainly not a moral crime. It is just unusual.
Well said. I agree completely.
And is it really that unusual? In nature with other mammals it’s not unusual at all. Perhaps our uptight and quite puritan society has convinced us that it is unusual. Like many other things that have been said are unusual as far as what it looks and feels like to be a woman.
That’s what I mean when I say perhaps it’s the beginning of a change that will allow us to reclaim who and what we really are as females. And males.
Actualy, in extant hunter gatherer societies,(i assume this is what you mean by “in nature”) children are spaced farther apart in age…not closer together.
Mostly I saw this photograph as a stunt for Time to get some attention. The issues of breastfeeding and attachment parenting seemed less important than selling magazines. Okay, so they used a woman’s body to do it, just like they have been using women’s bodies to get attention since the beginning of time, because women are very nice to look at and a good groin tingle will make them money.
I too saw the sexiness and thought, argh. Hope that kid doesn’t have any conflicted feelings later. But that’s between him and his mother, I guess.
In the end, even an open-minded woman like me must admit that I sexualize women’s bodies just like everyone else. Is that sexism or human nature? I don’t know, but I do know we are so prude in America.
There are alot of interesting articles about this and it may be true that Time took the chance to sell magazines, which to me just fine. I think the conversation is a very important one to be having and Time can provoke that.
Woman who chose to nurse for extended periods of time tend to do it in secret and I think we are finding out why now. It is interesting to note that many monkeys and apes nurse for 4 to 6 years.
In a kind of underground nursing mom world where women nurse for much longer than “normal,” pediatricians believe two to seven years is optimal. Also left alone the kid will always wean him or herself.
As far as the sexiness is concerned I saw the photograph as very sensual, The thing I loved about it the most. I think sensuality is different than sexuality, at least in the way most of us here in America think of it. The woman has a strong sensual sexual presence. What better way for a boy to learn how to manage what that power brings up in him than through and with his mom.
It would be very interesting to see what the response would have been if the woman would have been heavy, frumpy, even ugly. I also wonder if the response would have been different if the child was a female.
Smile. Yes indeed. Women are very nice to look at. And I believe the tingle in the groin is in a circumstance like this, a wonderful warm and juicy response to a very important beautiful part of life. I mean we are talking moms, babies, breasts, and nursing. Gotta have sex to bring all that about.
And the woman’s beautiful body, in all it’s lovely shapes and sizes is what inspires that Life affirming feeling right.
If this boy can remember being nursed by his mother, maybe he will actually have a heLthier understanding of women… and breasts.
I like things out in the open. An old friend of mine told me she remembers coming across the ocean on a ship to Canada. She was between 3 and 4. Her mother had a stool the girl used anytime she wanted a ‘drink’. She’d pull up mom’s blouse, find what she wanted and have at it. I had never heard of people nursing children that old until then. I guess whatever works for you, go for it. In other words, what I’m saying that this is not a new idea but an old world one.
I couldn’t agree more.
When I lived in Germany I knew a woman who had a baby and was planning on nursing him until at least age three, if not beyond. It was no big deal over there.
But here! We have our consensual reality and MUST conform.!
Perhaps it was Skinner putting his kid in a box that started the whole ‘detachment from offspring’ movement. Skinner’s child suffered trauma from the protracted episode, from what I remember. Point being, you have a spectrum: let’s call Skinner’s experiment one end and breastfeeding until age 16 the other. The middle sounds about right to me.
The middle in America. How ironic considering, almost everything huh. Thanks for commenting.