This week’s tabloid-worthy TIME Magazine Cover no more reflects the reality of a mother nursing her toddler than online porn reflects the reality of sex within a committed relationship.
Shame on TIME Magazine.
I’ll have more to say about this over the weekend, as I have a free moment to write.
And also, it's nobody's business! Why are these topics for other people's discussion? Every family is different.
Maybe this will help inform your post. http://lightbox.time.com/2012/05/10/parenting/#1
And this Q&A with the mom on the cover. That is her reality. http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/10/q-a-with-ja…
The article isn't about breastfeeding toddlers, it's about extended breastfeeding, hence the cover.
I think it's a very empowering picture. I definitely wouldn't want to mess with the lady.
I can't wait to read what you are going to write. We may disagree, but that is ok. Although Time may have published the pictures, I think those that posed aren't minding it.
I feel like there is some exploitation here, though I'm not sure if it is Time exploiting the woman and her child or the mom allowing herself and child to be exploited. The child may absolutely be horrified in a few years when his friends are making fun of him….Maybe I'm the one who is wrong….
I don't care if you breast feed until they go to school, I'm just not sure I need a visual. What am I missing??
My sister was a hospital social worker for many years. A woman job candidate brought her son to a group interview my sister attended, and proceeded to nurse him. He appeared to be a five year old.
She did not get the job.
Who takes a baby let alone a breast feeding toddler to a job interview? I don't get people.
Oh, gross. I'm sorry, seeing a five-year-old sucking his mother's breast is freakish.
I liked Jamie's interview. I read her blog and I didn't realize it was her on the cover until I read the interview. What I liked was that she said 'There seems to be a war going on between conventional parenting and attachment parenting, and that’s what I want to avoid. I want everyone to be encouraging. We’re not on opposing teams. We all need to be encouraging to each other, and I don’t think we’re doing a very good job at that."
That sums it up for me…
Shameful? Really? Looking forward to your take on why.
I've been reading your blog for a long time, rooting for you. That mom is a real mom here in LA with real kids and a real perspective. I hope you can extend some of the courtesy to her that you have been asking for.
I read her article/interview…..I agree real mom, real kids and real perspective. She is only 26 and I was so impressed how together she had it, however…….in my opinion…..this is not about breastfeeding at all.
Go ahead and breast feed until they are six years old, but do not exploit them on a cover of a magazine.
http://lifeisfullofboogerbutts.blogspot.com/ Here is my take on it.
Sounds like Katie is saying shame on Time, not shame on the mother. But you bring up an interesting point, if people are going to criticize the cover, aren't they also, even inadvertently, criticizing the mother? Hmmmm……..food for thought.
I just don't see why "shame" has to even enter into it. This picture is real life, an affirmative "I'm here, get used to it" middle finger to any of those who would pass judgement. In fact, the photo is all about the rejection of shame. Big step forward, if you ask me.
I don't know….Put breast feeding aside. Had they taken this picture in a natural setting It would have been better and more meaningful.
The child, who has no say in any of this is made to look bad. Standing on a chair, with his mothers breast in his mouth and looking into the camera. She put her child out there to be ridiculed. It's a dumb looking picture. I don't care if it's a three week old or a 4 year old……
I believe there are other pictures in the magazine that would have been more "worthy" of a front page position on this same topic. Time did this for the shock value and mom allowed it.
It's just my opinion…they made the child look bad.
Now, go to her home, in a natural setting. a quiet time between mom and son and take pictures showing how it really is…..ok.
I think it looks very unnatural too, the way the pic is posed. But what I find most disturbing is the headline "are you mom enough?" what an incendiary line that is.
If we want to talk 'natural', name one species which nurses its young to a corresponding developmental age as the boy pictured here. It's unnatural to nurse that long, and is only to satisfy the strange ego ("Are you Mom Enough") of the mother.
Her intention may be what she states it is (I'm not so sure I believe it), but if so, she doesn't seem to have done herself any favors. The photograph is confrontational, not loving. Her child (and her breast, actually) are props. If she is trying to promote attachment parenting this seems to be an odd image to choose to portray a loving parent/child bond. On the contrary, what it seems to portray is, "Eff you, I will breastfeed this kid and strike a sexually provocative pose and if you don't like it, tough shit." True, she can do that, but what does it have to do with attachment parenting? And how is treating her own child as a political statement being loving or kind to him? She's either naive or fake (in that the image she is promoting has nothing to do with her stated goal).
I don't see anything sexually provocative about the pose, but I agree that it seems confrontational. As in, "Fuck you, I'll breastfeed my child as long as he and I are fine with it." I'm fine with that, too.
@S – So busy this weekend that I've yet to even turn on my computer to write the blog post I want to write about this, but basically, you just nailed it. My only addition to your excellent comment would be to suggest that the 26 year old mom in this photo isn't to "blame" for the tabloid impact. The magazine did that and she naively agreed to stand this way and pose that way and now see if you can get your 3 year old to look up and WHAM. That's how that photo happened. Shame on TIME Magazine.
He is one month shy of four years old according to the article.
Oh, come on. The mom didn't know she was assuming a defiant, hand-on-hip posture with a smug look on her face and that her huge kid wouldn't look all the more huge and well outside the normal nursing-age standing on a chair?
It's just creepy.
Oh my I can hardly wait for Katies take on all this. I just read the article. It has very little to do with the front cover.
It is mainly about this Dr. Sears who advocates and writes books concerning attachment parenting. It is in my opinion that he would like to set the feminism movement back a few hundred years or so. Here is a quote.." Some mothers who choose to go back to their jobs quickly simply because they don't understand how disruptive that is the the well-being of their babies. So many babies in our culture are not being cared for in the way God designed and we are a nation are paying the pricing."
Dr Sears (both Mr and Mrs.) " also suggest mothers quit their jobs and BORROW money to make up the difference" WTH? that's the worst advice EVER. They (mr and mrs) subsidized their sons' wives so they could stay home with the Sears grandchildren.
Also in this article he uses the fear factor of we will brain damage our kids if we allow them to cry. I'm sorry……I've had all I can take of the Time cover and the article that accompanies it.