Where are all of these torch-bearing, anti-nursing hoardes I keep hearing about? I have yet to encounter a single shred of resistance to public nursing, and if I did get a comment (I am discreet, by the way) I would readily tell that person to step into the nearest handbasket to hell. Anyone who is offended by nursing is just a rube, full stop.

It seems to me that this reason of "public resistance" is easier to cite than the probably likelier reasons people quit (barring a physical problem): nursing is time-intensive, can be incredibly difficult and painful in the initial weeks, limits your freedom, is a challenge to mix with employment, and reduces your sex drive. Admit it, ladies. These are the real reasons you've quit. I'm just not buying this thing about the torch bearing hoardes.

Where are all of these torch-bearing, anti-nursing hoardes I keep hearing about?

Just look down a paragraph:

...the probably likelier reasons people quit (barring a physical problem): ... limits your freedom, is a challenge to mix with employment...

The Babytalk article discusses the reasons you mention, as well...

http://www.parenting.com/parenting/babytalk/article/0,19840,1215318,00.html

If the outcry is just for a lack of modesty, the magazine cover picture is misleading. That's way more breast exposure than most nursing moms go for. That's gotta freak out potential breastfeeders and others who are on the fence about it.

Formula companies use images like this in their ads -- you know, the ones that say "breastfeeding is best, but when you can't, all hail the comfort proteins." These pictures reinforce the notion that breastfeeding is inherently exhibitionist. No one unbuttons their blouses from the top down and pull our boobs out. We jsut lift the bottoms of our shirts and shove the baby's face underneath.

There is nothing wrong with breast feeding. But what's the harm in keeping it private? Does it really have to be splahsed across a magazine cover for everyone to see? I mean, why? What's the point? By the same token, we don't need to see a picture of a woman sitting on a toilet, a guy standing before a urinal, a teenage boy with his hand up the skirt of a teenage girl. All of these pictures depict totally natural behaviors and don't reveal any of the 'naughty bits'. It's not prudish to not want to view someone else's private moment. It's politeness and it should work both ways.

...a lot of you Americans are morons...

Here we get to see a cute little baby face and part of a ta-ta. Everybody wins!

Does no one breast feed this way in their own home? I don't have kids, but I laze around the house topless as it is, so lazing around the house breastfeeding doesn't seem like that much of a stretch.

That a lot of people all over the world are morons. We don't have a monopoly.

You're usually sharper than that, Sandra. I'm surprised.

Nursing is EATING. It's not at all analogous to bathroom functions involving the lower bits -- especially when it comes to hygiene. We see people eating in magazines all the time; why is it different when the person eating is a baby?

I once lugged my three-month-old from one end of a mall to the other looking for a decent place to sit nurse, and found nothing. (If they'd had a Nordstrom's, we'd have had no problem. They all have great nursing rooms.) Succumbing to the increasing wailing, I finally perched in a secluded chair behind the sale racks in Macy's shoe department, shoved the kid under my shirt, threw a blanket over it all, and got down to lunch.

Not long after, I was discovered by a shoe salesman, who was horrified by the loud smacking noises coming out from under the blanket. "You aren't. You ARE!!" he shouted at me, sounding so triumphal at catching me in my perfidy that you'd have thought he'd caught me shoving a pair of DJPs into the diaper bag.

"Yes, I'm nursing," I said, confused but calm.

"That's digusting! You can't DO that here!" he sputtered, bug-eyed with outrage.

"Where would you have me do it?" I asked, wide-eyed.

"How about the ladies' room?"

"I went there. There's not a single chair in there for me to sit on."

"You could have gone in a stall and sat on a toilet."

"EEEWWW!" I groaned. "Now THAT"S digusting! Would you eat YOUR lunch sitting on a public toilet? No? I didn't think so!"

We might have gone on -- my next move was to insist on speaking to his boss -- but by that time, lunch was over, so we left. But I was so furioius that it was a decade before I bought shoes at Macy's again.

The nursing police are everywhere. It IS possible to nurse with discretion. And it IS possible for the prudes to get over themselves, for the good of the children. Good on BabyTalk for keeping the issue out in the open, so to speak.

Why do you consume that ice cream where people can see you? Don't you know that's a bodily function, best done in private? Have you no modesty?

In all seriousness, I get so sick of the argument "Yes, it's a natural bodily function, but so is pooping, and we hide that!" It's a natural bodily function, all right... it's called EATING. Those of us who can do it without sucking at someone else's breast do not make any attempt to hide it, despite the fact that the mouth is arguably a *more* sexual organ than the breast (while breasts can be used to masturbate someone to orgasm, so can pillows; oral stimulation of the genitals is a much more reliable and common means of causing orgasm in both sexes than either stimulation of the breasts or breasts being used to stimulate the genitals). So if we're feeding a baby with our breasts, why is that somehow more private and personal than if we ourselves are eating?

Breasts are sexy, it's true. But so are legs. And faces. And hair. Since in our culture we don't believe in putting burkhas on people, there shouldn't be anything more special about breasts than about a man's bare chest or either sex's legs. Maybe you're grossed out by the sight of a partially uncovered breast (although as a general rule, since the baby's head is covering the nipple, you can't see as much on a breastfeeding woman as you can on a woman in a low-cut bikini). But my baby doesn't care what grosses you out; my baby is hungry when she's hungry, and a partially uncovered breast is a *lot* less disruptive than a squalling, screaming infant. And why should her right to eat be restricted because she's on a special diet that requires my exposing a body part?