TIME Cover on Attachment Parenting

I first saw this photo when a colleague, a fellow breastfeeding mom, sent it via email with the subject title Controversial TIME magazine. When I saw it I was like "Huh? Why controversial?" I didn't see why it was controversial. I wasn't bothered by the tag line "Are you mom enough?" like how some moms saw it. I wasn't bothered by the photo with the toddler boy nursing from his mom while standing up. Not until I saw the reactions of American women on the cover. I've watched it on Inside Edition and Entertainment tonight. Some said it was "gross" while others said it's "disgusting." First of all, I would understand some people calling it weird because for them they see the child as old enough to stop nursing. But to call it gross and disgusting? How is a child eating his lunch gross and disgusting? And to think, these comments came from women! I hated those women! I'm a breastfeeding mom and my daughter is already 15 months old. She has more than 10 teeth, can stand and walk on her own and we still continue to breastfeed.

I found this article which a breastfeeding mom I follow on twitter posted, From Breasts to Boobs and Back Again written by Jason Good. And I realized that most of those who reacted negatively on the cover are people who only saw breasts as sexual objects. Mr Good writes:

"I was breastfed as a baby. Honestly, I feel squirmy even typing “breast.”  Twelve years after I stopped nursing, breasts became boobs, and then in high school they became tits (and a plethora of other names), and now, as a husband and father, they’re back to breasts. I’ve come full circle. I see them as a means of nourishing children, and as sexual objects. I’m not sure how I feel about that. The fact that I sexualize the one piece of female anatomy from which I once fed, makes me feel grotesquely simple.  I think that feeling is at the heart of why people are uncomfortable with the recent image on the cover of Time Magazine."

Breastfeeding and weaning your baby is a personal thing. Let's not decide for the mothers that it's time they stop feeding their babies. For other women out there, please respect your fellow women's decision to do this for their child.

As Mr. Good says, "Women are already fighting enough battles over what they’re allowed to do with their bodies. Let’s not add another one."

Please read the article to give you some perspective. Here is also a link on Dr. Sears' reaction to the TIME cover and article.

Day 12 of 30 (x2)