Letters to the Editor
-
One last thought.
If a mom and her child are sitting on a public park bench and the boy-child is approaching puberty, and still making suckling sounds...
forget what I just thought.
...I say pass bye the slurping neocons and his mommy and pretend you did not notice them?
That breast-feeder like that is likely gonna be a member of the judicial or executive branch of the War-on-Terror" government. We don't need a Attorney General like that who makes up laws and has stink-tanks write pro-war policies.
Vote NO to go to war, bomb, and watch! 'Um gawk! 'Um watch and listen secretly as persons make love in the private bedrooms.
Politico's should suck-off in private jail-cells! Let bush-membership loyalist moan like hell's dark angels, and chain bound them up in eternal torment, forever? I not a lawyer or a theologian...
...damn unwholesome politicians suck-slop at the pig's tit and hog trough.
There should be a well financed lobby-group and laws made that a lollipop gets stuck in their mouth!
-
Thou Hast Shown Thy Private Regions Publicly, Harlot!
As a descendant of seven of those Pilgrim passengers who were on the "Mayflower", I am pleased to be one of their distant progeny. I am also embarrassed by the legacy of prudish behavior that descends from them and is alive and unwell in America today.
The sight of a woman breast-feeding, to me, simply shows a warm and loving bond between mother and child. It shows a woman who loves her child, cares for his/her development and who takes the time to nourish that child as a bottle of formula probably can't.
Those cretins who equate breast-feeding with a sexual act or indecent exposure are most likely the ones who would look at Botticelli's "Venus Rising" or Michaelangelo's "David" and see only nakedness.
After travelling through Europe and experiencing a more sophisticated populace...then returning to the States...I want to bellow at the top of my lungs to my fellow citizens here: "Grow up, people!"
-
WIC
Glad to hear WIC gives out hand pumps. That wasn't the case in CT in 2002.
However, while a hand pump is good in a pinch, an electric double pump is necessary for successful log-term pumping. (Medela Pump-in-Style, Ameda Purely Yours, Lactina Select, etc). Renting those can cost $80 a month. Purchasing is in the $200-$300 range. Still cheaper by far than formula ($1500 for one year is one estimate I remember from 2002). But help for lower-income working moms would be appreciated.
-
The science writer finds her inner snark...
Welcome to Broadsheet, Katherine! Awesome post.
This disconnect between the breastfeeding rate and the media reports of intolerance is attributable to two things:
1) Moms are doing it in private. I can't tell you how many times I ducked out of a restaurant or a mall to nurse in my car. We're still a ridiculously puritanical country. The boob needs to be desexualized, and disentangled from its taboos. Turn on the tv in, for example, France and you'll see breasts. And as a result, the french are much less repressed and normal about a whole host of issues, including nursing.
2) The media stories are skewed. I mean, who can resist a story about a woman's breasts, even if it's relatively inconsequential.
-
Keywords
Juliebird : However, while a hand pump is good in a pinch, an electric double pump is necessary for successful log-term pumping. (Medela Pump-in-Style, Ameda Purely Yours, Lactina Select, etc). Renting those can cost $80 a month. Purchasing is in the $200-$300 range.
Given the right keywords, your insurance may buy you one of those outright. The lactation consultant at the hospital looked over the records for our daughters birth and told us exactly which snippets of information to hand over to get the cost of the pump covered. I walked around the block to the medical supply place and when the baby went home we had the pump all ready to go.
-
In the dark days of the '70's
Our daughters were born in 1970 and 1974. My wife breast fed both of them exclusively for 6 months, when they started getting other stuff. Never bought "baby food", just ground up whatever we were eating. At one year our second daughter, when offered the breast at bedtime, closed my wifes shirt, basically saying that period was over. She would rather eat whatever we were eating. The La Leche League had occasional breast-feeding parties, where the husbands sat next to their wives, while they breast fed their babies. We men looked at each other silently wondering what the hell we were doing there.
Tits have two functions, the first to attract the male and the second to feed the baby. Those who don't like to see a woman suckling her baby in public have those two functions confused. And those who equate breast-feeding with elimination, and to banish women to the toilet for breast-feeding are truly sick. The females who have that attitude probably have ugly tits, besides.
-
Natural Thing To SEE
Black Sheep,
Please, next time, read to the end of my post before opening your bag of snarks. I didn't say that breast feeding wasn't natural. I said that seeing it, in-your-face style, is not natural in our society (if you thought I was talking about some other society, or some other era of history, my bad for not being more clear).
If I'm the kind of guy that loves going commando, and, while sitting in a small circle of friends my too-loose shorts remained flared open, I expect that my friends would find it slightly embarrassing and slightly distracting. And, if I kept repeating this situation, they would find it annoying after a while.
I am not saying that going commando is as an important a personal choice as breastfeeding in public (it is not). And unfortunately I have to state that qualifier before another bag of snarks is produced. But I am highlighting that society has a different emphasis on certain parts of the body, and how they are displayed in public. Boobs are not like elbows, as any boy or girl entering or past puberty knows. Nursing a kid, though appreciated and applauded, still does not make a boob an elbow.
-
Not so punny
Can you work in any more dumb puns and insulting references to breasts? Why not a serious article?
And this comment is just too much:
"Tits have two functions, the first to attract the male and the second to feed the baby. Those who don't like to see a woman suckling her baby in public have those two functions confused. And those who equate breast-feeding with elimination, and to banish women to the toilet for breast-feeding are truly sick. The females who have that attitude probably have ugly tits, besides."
What's that giant entitlement sound? Why do you think breasts have any function to attract you? How absurd! And you think you get to rate what women's breasts look like? You've been completely "sucked" in to the notion that breasts are sexual commodities that women put on only for men's enjoyment, haven't you? Do you think women take them off and keep them in a box when the menz aren't around to drool? They aren't for you. They belong to the women that have them and aren't your business at all, you self-important, puffed-up-with-entitlement ass.