Comments on: Controversy Re: TIME’s “Are You Mom Enough” Cover

By: George Soros

George Soros — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 16:42:00 +0000

I’d love to be that kid in the picture, but I’m probably not the only one. I call dibs!

By: ThePoet Darkling

ThePoet Darkling — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 03:14:00 +0000

“Most folks who are nursing children 3-4+ are only doing it a couple of times a week” I have never met any! I breastfed my daughter until 3 or so. She quit on her own, but nursed every day until then, three or four times a day. In fact, she never had cows milk or a bottle for that matter. Once she stopped, I dried up almost immediately!

By: ThePoet Darkling

ThePoet Darkling — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 03:05:00 +0000

Why?

By: Christopher C.

Christopher C. — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 18:36:00 +0000

The fact that she is breastfeeding her child is not the problem with the image, more so HOW the breastfeeding is advertised is the key problem. If you look at a woman breastfeeding her child, almost all of the time, you will never see a woman breastfeed her child in this type of way, in this type of pose. The woman is assuming a dominant and obsessive stance in the photo. This, coupled along with the headling “Are you Mom enough?”, is enough to take breastfeeding, or being a mother for the matter,and turn it into some sort of game or competition. Public breastfeeding shouldn’t be the issue, but rather the fact that it being sexualized and turned into a competition between mothers should be the one that is being looked at.

By: Quick hit: Shifting discourses of motherhood: the Victorian breastfeeding photo fad - feimineach

Fri, 03 Jan 2014 17:16:06 +0000

[…] year Lynne Grumet set the internet a-flutter when she appeared on the cover of TIME magazine breastfeeding her toddler. Reactions were largely negative, often reflecting unease at the open display of a sexualized body […]

By: Tatiana Kohanzad

Tatiana Kohanzad — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 00:57:00 +0000

I don’t believe that anyone should be offended over the fact that this woman is breastfeeding her child, I believe that breast feeding is a natural act. The problem that I do have with the photo is the way it was staged. I don’t like how the child and this intimate moment between him and his mother is being exploited for attention for the magazine. It feels as though the magazine tried as well to exaggerate breastfeeding with the way the photo is set up, the child is standing up and looking at the camera with huge eyes and the mother isn’t even paying attention to him. It’s all exaggerated to shock viewers and it doesn’t look right.

By: Minnie

Minnie — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 22:52:00 +0000

With my breasts the boy would not need the chair.: )

By: joefuss

joefuss — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:12:00 +0000

Why do so few women on here see nothing wrong with breastfeeding a boy of 8 ?

By: Sam F

Sam F — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:20:00 +0000

My fiancé and I are thinking about having a baby in the Future and breast feeding has always been a choice for us, however I never knew that breastfeeding a child for two long can be abuse. I am also very shocked to see that the magazine “Time” has put a picture of a model and a three year old being brest feed. Shit that is like intimidating the whole point of a women by saying “ Are You Mom Enough” are you stating to the world that your child has to be nourished for ever is humiliating and disruptive to those who choose to breastfeed their kids. The magazine is sending a message to women stating that they are not women like if they don’t stick out their breast and feed their kids not matter how old they are. The message is even worse that the child has to stand on a stool while the mother facial reaction states that is ok to do so. The magazine is also saying that women who don’t breast feed their child till that age are doing the wrong thing. Society believes these messages not knowing that its not the right thing to do.

By: Mita Son

Mita Son — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 08:29:00 +0000

I have no problem with mothers breastfeeding, I encourage it. But I felt kind of weird when I saw that it was a grown 3 year old breastfeeding instead of a baby or an infant. At that point, at the age of 3 he could probably walk, go to the kitchen and pour himself his own glass of milk. I also didn’t like the title or the hook for the magazine, “Are you mom enough”, is sounds like a challenge. Like women who don’t breastfeed aren’t “mom enough” and the mothers who do and go onto breastfeeding their kids till they’re 5 are the “strongest moms”

By: Poetrygirl

Poetrygirl — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 02:30:00 +0000

First i want to start by saying when I first saw this picture I was disgusted with this mother and both worried about the growth of the child. Steve Harvey not to long after this image apeared used it as his top 10 punch lines on his radio show, he called “the top 10 ways you can tell that your child is to old to be breastfeed”, if I recall some of the jokes were ( when your child can pull down your shirt and help him or her self, when lunch time at school comes around and he or she is crying for breast milk instead of actual food) and the list goes on. But I have to say Steve Harvey wasn’t the first to make jokes about a situation such as this; if you’ve seen the movie “Grown ups” then you would know that there is a young about the same age as the boy in this times magazine cover also being breastfeed, the only difference is that the movie put it in as a joke as for this mom I guess just to get attention because I see no cause for this mess that she has displayed.

By: eeka

eeka — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:25:00 +0000

Do you know much about child development? Kids can master a cup around 12 months, and by this age also often have several words/signs that mean something in particular. I don’t think nursing at this point would be considered extended breastfeeding by any extent of the imagination.

And yes, the staging is messed up.

By: Elena

Elena — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 21:51:00 +0000

…And besides, Lysa Arryn’s fertility is a rather significant plot point in the books. She married Jon Arryn, the King’s right hand but a very old man, and had tremendous difficulties to have a heir. The kid, Robert Arryn (Robin in the TV series because the producers are firm believers that viewers can’t cope when a seven-year-old and the middle aged man the kid was named for –Robert Baratheon– are both characters), was overprotected in part because he was so irreplaceable (and the prolonged breastfeeding of Robert is supposed to be a literary shorthand for the child’s psychological and emotional dependence of his mother and his arrested mental development). This is in sharp contrast with Lysa’s sister Catelyn, who married the head of the (also hugely important) Stark family and had five healthy and robust children.

This plot point is further explored in the books, but the general gist of it is that a noblewoman’s value was mostly in the children she could give birth to.

…Yeah. I’ve read the books.

By: Elena

Elena — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 21:41:00 +0000

The point is, noble women wanted to get pregnant again as soon as they could, because of the high rate of infant deaths, and because they needed one or more male heirs to reach adulthood. Lactation can have a contraceptive effect, so passing the infant to a wet nurse freed the mother to try as soon as possible for a new child. Besides, as childbed deaths were so frequent, wet nurses were also employed when the mother died. (And, of course, if the toddler died, as they frequently did of illness or accident, breastfeed could hardly been prolonged) But generally speaking, it's not about the baby, it's about maximizing the number of pregnancies. Just look a bit around Wikipedia for the biographies of noblewomen. also, the vast majority of women were not noblewomen... We're talking very specifically about the realism of the actions of Lysa Arryn, born a Tully, who is the ruler of the Vale, in GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire book series. She *is* a noblewoman.

By: Anna

Anna — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 17:59:00 +0000

Thanks for your response. I had never heard of Ezzo techniques, very interesting and troubling! I actually was referring to parenting more in the direction of attachment parenting. There is a very, very caricatured depiction of a family that practices attachment parenting in the 2009 movie Away We Go by Sam Mendes. Are you familiar with this movie?

I must emphasize that I recognize the depiction of the family is extremely negative and full of misguided stereotypes. However, I have actually encountered parents who acted in the exact condescending, controlling, and self-important way the parents do in the movie, particularly the feminist academic portrayed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. This is the kind of behavior – of both attachment parenting advocates and academic-leaning professionals – that I had in mind when I responded to you.