Time Magazine arouse many feelings after covering a story on attachment parenting on May 21 where they featured a young mother breastfeeding her three-year-old son (Dettwyler 46). We understand the magazine’s aim to sell a greater amount of copies, but what is the mother’s purpose of being displayed in such a magazine breastfeeding the child who is almost as tall as the first grader? I personally found it pathetic and even insulting to display those breasts of the beautiful and a model-to-be woman in this magazine.
We cannot claim that our natural beauty may sexually assault others. We have seen many times how women were asked to leave malls and other public places for publicly breastfeeding their children. This indecency has even caused the establishment of more serious campaigns against breastfeeding, for instance the formation of Citizens Against Breast Feeding Organization. A number of American citizens have been tired of stomaching this behavior and are now taking action to educate public and advocate for a change of this behavior. If one listens to their recorded phone message, you would be aware of the compressive summary of the organization’s objective.
The message begins with thanking you for calling Citizens Against Breast Feeding Organization and then the description of the group as a grassroots of the organization whose main aim is to persuade women to be against some incestuous acts that are considered immoral and pervasive is followed. The group is privately funded and seeks to recruit as many members as possible. They are even advocating for a complete ban on breastfeeding in both private and public places. We may easily overrule that their reactions are a bit exaggerated, but to some extent, this primitive ritual has been violating the babies’ civil rights. The truth is that in most cases, especially when breastfeeding is prolonged beyond one and half years, it creates an incestuous relationship between the mother and the child leading to moral decay.
I think these women enjoy the erotic experience and in return gratify their innocent toddlers. I would not deny that this behavior affects the future of our children. We teach them illicit sex right from infancy and it subsequently manifests itself in their addiction to promiscuity. Think of why the homosexuality statistics are skewed towards lesbianism. Breastfeeding could not be the only reason, but it is certainly one of the major ones. Mothers breastfeed their baby girls to a point where the girls enjoy sucking and playing with breasts.
This makes them even seek for sexual gratification from this act. Therefore, breastfeeding is one of the major reasons why women feel even comfortable to touch another woman’s breasts. This has contributed to the republican’s position against breastfeeding toddlers and some citizens are seeking to strengthen this stand by making breastfeeding unlawful. Breastfeeding has a greater impact on the mother if compared to the child. One of the major problems associated with breastfeeding is pain.
It occurs especially among mothers who breastfeed for the first time. Breasts are generally very sensitive organs especially the nipples. Therefore, it is normal to experience some discomfort while breastfeeding the child especially before getting used to this process. The intensity of this discomfort varies from one individual to another, but most of them endure unbearable pain just when feeding their toddlers.
Then, why cannot formulas and bottle milk be used to avoid thisagony? Doctors will lie that pain will go away just to make you breastfeed, but the truth is that they do not know that for sure. Some people even endure this pain and discomfort while breastfeeding their third or fourth child. Breastfeeding also changes a woman’s a shape of breasts and sensitivity tremendously. This makes them no longer feel the same when their partners are caressing breasts. In other words, what used to be a sexual organ turns out to be just another body part.
Therefore, it is important to consider this before deciding on breastfeeding your child. You need to ask yourself, how important is your sexuality and how will this affect your husband or partner? The truth is they will no longer perceive your breasts as they used to. However, we may only state that the baby will always be a competitive edge.Breastfeeding makes the mother feel needed.
It makes her the only person who can feed the baby and no one else can do that for her. Therefore, this may make it very hard for such mothers to return to work. They also have to be accompanied by their suckling children wherever they go as long as it will take long enough to make them hungry. This is why most ladies who decide to breastfeed their children then automatically become stay-at-home-mothers. It even becomes a challenge to go out with their partners or even go on vacations.
This level of commitment is actually unnecessary since we can just give our children bottled milk and formulas, which play the same role and are as good as breast milk. The mother will be able to live her life exactly like before and work just like she used to. Taking into account the state of economy, giving up a job to babysit is grossly irrational. What if the mother is a single parent and the only breadwinner? How will she be able to pay for her bills? Even if she does have a permanently employed partner, we realize that their living standards will be greatly reduced due to the reduction in their total household income while the family size is enlarged and needs multiply.
One more reason against breastfeeding is that it makes very hard to measure the amount of milk taken by the child. The volume of milk that your baby consumes in a day is very important to determine since it helps control and ensure its health. Most mothers who breastfeed their babies would just let the child suckle any time it cries. Indeed, the babies may stop at some point, but do they ever stop to think about how it affects them? In most cases, the child will be overfed if not underfed since the mother cannot determine the volume of milk consumed. Overfeeding the children will result in health problems such as obesity while underfeeding will also cause other problems including the development of body organs.
Giving the baby bottled milk and formulas helps to be aware of how much the child consumes and its health can be easily maintained. Breastfeeding in that sense does not only affect the child’s physical health, but also emotional state. Breastfed children tend to have emotional problems that lead to waking up at night on a constant basis. Mothers are forced to wake up and let them suckle in order to calm children (Aronowitz 45). Statistics show that children who consume bottled milk and formulas do not develop that kind of negative attachment to the mother and do not wake up at night as frequent as the breastfed children do.
This attachment can also result in spoiling a child. Children grow up realizing that they will always get what they want and or simply cry in order to receive desired results. When they are no longer children, this selfish nature will not possibly go away but just turn into violence. The truth is that the nature of a person is a reflection of what this individual used to be as an infant and how he or she was brought up.
Breastfeeding is a very demanding activity and women can attest that it is very tiring. Having to always hold the baby since you are its only food is very tedious not to mention how messy it is or can get (Koren 56). Babies vomit and urinate on their mothers if good care is not taken. If the child does this while the mother is miles away from the proper place where she could change both baby’s cloths and hers, then the experience becomes a nightmare.
The mother is also forced to wear appropriate clothes that enable her to breastfeed the children. In most cases, clothes have to be loose which is considered an unattractive way of dressing. This is not the major sacrifice the mother has to make when you consider that she has to modify her diet in order to be able to produce enough milk for the child. Mothers will be forbidden from consuming certain foods and drinks no matter how much they crave for them for the good of their child. She will also have to take certain prescribed foods that will boost milk production irrespective of whether they like them or not.
In general, this could be too much sacrifice while one could just buy the child the food they require and both the mother and child could be happy with what the mother is eating.Certain medications are also known to interrupt breastfeeding, which could be out of the mother’s control. This could lead to a very abrupt weaning process that can affect the baby. The mother who, however, feeds her child based on these alternatives will not face problems when they have to take such medications. We are also living in a world where HIV has become a major problem and it is high time we considered incorporating certain measures to ensure that we reduce its spread.
The truth is that the HIV virus could be passed on to the baby through breast milk. This innocent being is infected by this deadly virus due to a foolish mistake that could easily be avoided. Considering that people are reluctant to get tested and know their HIV status, most mothers in this world are infecting their innocent children without even knowing it. Governments should employ more serious measures to safeguard the lives of these babies and they should start with ensuring that no one is allowed to breastfeed their child unless tested first.
This is like ensuring that the food the mother gives to the baby is safe and such guarantees can no longer be obtained from the fact that the food is breast milk. Breastfeeding is also associated with hormonal instability. It releases hormones that can make the mother feel good at first, however, there is always a continuous fluctuation of hormones, which tend to temper with the woman’s emotions. As mentioned earlier, the woman’s sexuality may also be reduced due to the hormonal imbalance.
In addition to changing the couple’s attitude towards the breasts, woman’s libido may greatly go down during the time of breastfeeding. This will also affect the man’s sex life since he may not feel satisfied with the way it is. As a result, most men may seek for secret relationships out of wedlock (Torgus 34). It would be advisable to ensure that the baby does not drive your relationship with your partner apart even if it means feeding it with bottled milk and formulas.
