Jamie Lynne Grumet is a mother of two & she has appeared on the cover of Time magazine as attachment parent. This woman breastfeeds both her kids. One is three & the other is five year old.
And on the cover, she’s breastfeeding her three-year-old Aram as he stands on a small seat to reach her. He will be turning four next month. The other son Samuel is adopted. The history goes something like this: she was breastfed by her own mother till the age of six. Naturally she doesn’t mind breastfeeding her kids anywhere. It’s all very natural to her.
Since we have seen lots of stuff in all these years, I’m not in a state of shock. It’s her choice. Who are we to criticize her? She has the right to feed both her kids & she has the right to come on the cover to shock people.
I am actually on nobody’s side.
It’s just that I don’t like to check out certain pictures & maybe it’s one of them. Once I wrote that I don’t have any problem with birth photography but I can’t see such pictures. I think I have the right not to see certain things, but some women took it so personally & left comments that I should never have a baby. You may enjoy watching those pics, because it’s your baby & your experience but I don’t think everyone will enjoy it & you can't thrust that kind of thing on me. You’ve got to be really backward & illiterate if you go around leaving comments that the other person should not have babies cause she is not obsessed with birth photography as you are.
Coming back to Jamie Lynne Grumet who’s all for breastfeeding kids & she can still recall memories of being latched onto her mother's breast.
“It's really warm. It's like embracing your mother, like a hug. You feel comforted, nurtured and really, really loved. I had so much self-confidence as a child, and I know it's from that.”
It’s really tough on me to write on this topic :P Maybe that’s why I’m testing myself.
“There are people who tell me they're going to call social services on me or that it's child molestation. I really don't think I can reason with those people.”
I believe they presume she derives some sort of sexual pleasure by this act.
She also runs a blog & she’s very proud of her mother. She wrote on her blog:
“I love how my mother never made breastfeeding a dirty or secret act.”
Moreover she also wrote:
“When critics are making very uneducated analyses of these issues (with absolutely no personal experience), it actually hurts the mothers trying to care for their children. Find me a child that was breastfed past two that said they wished they hadn't been. Motherhood is hard enough then to hear constantly how you are caring for your child is "weird" or makes people "uncomfortable" is almost too much to handle.”
Jamie Lynne is not the only woman who does this, even actress Mayim Bialik breastfeeds her three year old son & she has even written a book on it.
Those who have no personal experience shouldn’t criticize mothers who want to breastfeed their kids. I have heard that you could breastfeed a child up to their second birthday. It’s also written in the Quran. But I have never heard that you can go on breastfeeding for so long. Moreover, there are kids who are confident & they were not breastfed for a variety of reasons. I think a mother would know what’s best for her child. I don’t think the world has the right to interfere.
It’s just that we live in a world where we think it’s our right to find fault with everything that anyone else does. It’s okay what we do. For instance, in my country, there is this trend of hiring 10 year old maids who take care of infants. A 10 year old is herself a child. How can she take care of an infant or even a 4 or 5 year old kid? Sometimes the maids are older. And the question is: how could you possibly trust such maids in the 1st place? But those parents have the right to hand over their kids to servants. There are all kinds of people.
What I find really stupid is how both the mother & child are looking at the camera! It’s nothing natural. It’s quite a made-up pose. And the woman has this attitude: come what may, I don’t really care!
And I don’t like the question: 'Are you mom enough?' on the cover. They don’t have the right to judge mothers. Neither do people have the right to judge Jamie Lynne for breastfeeding for whatever reason & nor do Jaime Lynne has the right to judge others for not breastfeeding up to a certain age.
And the shocking cover hasn't been that shocking. I'm not pulling out my hair & those who are...I think they need to chill.
Source: Q&A with Jamie Lynne Grumet
