Summer of the Attachment Mother

 I took social psychology as an undergraduate and one of my most vivid memories of the course was the day our instructor used a clip from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to drive home the point about sensationalism and its use to create fear in the public. The segment, called I Know What You Did Last Summer of the Shark, was a parody about the previous year's media focus on a handful of shark attacks. As I've watched the momentum gathered by Time Magazine's May cover and article on attachment parenting, the images of that segment have replayed over and over in my head.

Personally I am not offended by the cover. There is something about its defiance that I find appealing and almost necessary. I am mother, hear me roar!

 (Comic Credit: Heather Cushman-Dowdee)

However, I can't say I am not offended by its intended purpose or the hyperbolic picture it paints of parents who practice attachment parenting. It feels a lot like prostitution to allow someone to "buy" what is and should be a beautiful and natural part of life in an effort to exploit and own it for their own purposes. Yuck. Time, as a magazine, had a purpose in mind: to put something controversial on the cover and by doing so increase readership and media attention. Mission accomplished. Even that doesn't bother me so much though. What bothers me is that people are so willing to buy into what they are fed without so much as questioning it or questioning themselves. I think at best a title like "Are You Mom Enough" is an invitation to evaluate your parenting and perhaps change the things you're unhappy with. At worse it is an invitation to judge others, based solely on the information provided, and to conquer and divide by heightening fear of the unknown or different. I am only one of many people responding to this, and definitely not the most eloquent. But I think my point is sound. Live and let live.

Recommended reading: Mama Solidarity and Are You Mom Enough, The Questions is for what.

Creepy People

I had an interesting dialogue with a mom at work yesterday. Keep in mind that I work for a "feminist, empowerment based, nonjudgmental, and culturally sensitive" agency. The conversation went something like this:

Unnamed person: Can you believe they're almost 1 year old?
Me: No, I really can't. I feel like all I've done is blink.
Unnamed: When was she born again?
Me: April 24th.
Unnamed person: Are you still breastfeeding?
Me: Yes, Galicia has started solids but she's still mostly on breast milk.
Unnamed person: Oh my god! How long do you plan on continuing?
Me: I don't know. I don't really have a set limit. I guess until she stops. I'm going to let her self-wean.
Unnamed person:What! What if she doesn't stop until she's 5?
Me: Then she'll breastfeed until she's 5.
Unnamed person:That's creepy.
Me: Ok. Maybe it's creepy to you.
Unnamed person: No that's creepy.
Me: The U.S. is one of the only countries that sees that as being creepy. The World Health Organization recommends moms breastfeed for 2 years or more. It is the American Academy of Pediatrics that recommends at least one year. Dr. H (she's the doctor who runs a free clinic at our agency) breastfed her daughter for quite some time.
Unnamed person: Yeah the 1 year is what I am familiar with. I just don't get what they get out of it at that point.
Me: Well, the composition of your milk changes with your child's needs. There's so little research on women but what they're finding is that the child's saliva sends chemical signals to make milk that has antibodies and etc. So they still benefit no matter their age. But yes, some of what they get is also comfort.
Unnamed: Yeah, it's mostly comfort nursing at that point if you ask me.

Note: Ignoring that "at least" part. Selective bias? Internalized oppression?

Somehow it felt monumentally more painful to have this coming from another mother of color who knows how difficult breastfeeding can be, particularly in our communities. Instead of mutually supporting, praising and recognizing each other as full-time working moms who are committed to breastfeeding/pumping as an act of love for our children, we are taught to criticize and shame each other.

On a positive note, it doesn't have to be this way. I went to a training on human trafficking last month and asked for an accommodation so that I could pump and the response from the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence (FCASV) was amazing. We were at a hotel and two of us were provided with a private hotel room in which to pump. I wrote a followup thank you note to Jennifer Dritt, the Executive Director. Her response was, "We’d be feminist in name only if we didn’t support working mothers." So unnamed person, let's make lack of support for women's choices and needs creepy.

(Pictured: A Yanomami mother breastfeeding both her child and an orphaned monkey. Remember that we humans also drink other animals' milk ourselves. Photo credit:Mark Edwards/Hard Rain Picture Library).