Oh, my, I am having a Sally-Field-at-the-Academy-Awards moment after all of your supportive comments. Thank you very much. If you are a pray-er, please pray for the woman who was angered by the whole thing. I am sad to think that a conversation here played a part, however small, in someone's choice to leave the Church.
Once more into the fray, this time minus the sarcasm. It just exasperates me, you know? Every nine months or so, public breastfeeding makes the news. Breastfeeding advocates say, "It's natural!" Newspaper columnists say, "So is peeing!" And I want to fling myself out the window in frustration. I am typing on the first floor, in case you feared for my safety, so the only thing bruised in a despairing defenestration would be my petunias and perhaps my dignity. Anyway: let's talk about the discretion question. Lots and lots of people say public breastfeeding is fine as long as the mother is discreet. What if she's not?
I suggest that we ditch the discretion caveat for three reasons. One is personal, one is practical, and the third is philosophical. Before we get into it, let me tell you that I am an ordinary American woman, reared in this country where nipples are seen in Playboy and in art museums. I felt a frisson of embarrassment last week at church when my 3yo tugged on my nursing dress and accidentally exposed me. (None of my dresses fit quite right at the moment. It's like I have a layer of subcutaneous guacamole smeared on my back.) I am not looking for license to waggle my slobbery nipples in a stranger's face -- perish the thought. But I have these three objections to the idea that women must be discreet in order to nurse in public.
First, the personal: as you may have gathered from my older posts, my mantra in working with breastfeeding mothers is I Am Not In Her Shoes. I don't know if that baby never went to breast because the mother was molested and just could not face the thought; I don't know if she weaned at eight weeks because her husband said the leaking was disgusting and things had been shaky between them anyway since the baby came. Even if she says, "I didn't want to feel like a cow," or something that rubs me the wrong way, I cannot know the whole story and I am not going to presume that I do. I make choices for precisely one set of children, and as long as I don't see gross abuse or neglect I'm not going to hassle another mother. I'm guessing she has enough hassles in her life already.
My unwillingness to demand discreet breastfeeding arises from my desire to give other mothers room to make their own choices. Who determines what's discreet? Personally, I do it this way: I'm careful to stay covered in church, a little more relaxed if some midriff shows at a playground or a restaurant, and I don't think about it at home with another nursing mom. Absent a moral imperative, though, I'm reluctant to impose my rules on other people. Last year I was considering going to the CCL convention -- I have family near the convention site -- but I found myself really bothered by their dress code, which prohibited sleeveless clothing. It would not have been a hardship to find things with sleeves to wear for three days, but the apparent assumption that I wouldn't make wise choices on my own troubled me. I don't buy anything sleeveless unless the armholes are modest, the neckline is modest, and the cut of the garment is reasonably generous. Is there something I'm missing here, something irresistibly erotic about those four inches of flesh just below my shoulders?
I think rules about how other people should breastfeed are similarly unhelpful. You want to drape a blanket? Go for it. You hate blankets? Nurse without; no argument from me. You didn't notice that your baby scooted your shirt aside? We've all been there, hon. Relax. And that leads me to my second point, the practical one.
Nursing discreetly is a learned skill. It takes time and practice to get good at it. Breastfeeding is most important and most vulnerable in the early weeks, when many first-time mothers are not able to get baby to breast in one smooth unobtrusive motion. Does the pressure to breastfeed discreetly or not at all make it harder for new mothers? I think it does. I think some of them stay home, feeling isolated (and perhaps resentful about the pressure to nurse when it means being lonely at home), and others switch to formula. Many, of course, do fine. But I'm thinking again about breastfeeding duration rates in this country: what does it take to nudge that curve upward, one baby at a time?
At this point in my life I feel called to assist new mothers -- specifically through providing breastfeeding support, but in a broader sense, too. I want tell new moms in my community, "Welcome to motherhood -- we're glad you're here"; I want to help them enjoy their babies. If American ideas about breasts make it harder for mothers to give their babies what they need, it's the ideas and not the babies that need to change.
Third point, the philosophical one: when the US becomes a breastfeeding culture again, people will not pay much attention to nursing mothers. Kathy Dettwyler says that typically, in breastfeeding cultures (even those with much stricter standards about women's dress), breasts are sort of like elbows: they have a job to do and people don't get worked up about seeing them do it. Are your elbows showing right now? Not a problem, right?
As we move from Point A, where discretion is expected, to Point B, where it's optional just like long sleeves are optional, women are going to make a range of choices. Some will stick closer to Point A; others won't. Don't get me wrong here: I'm not saying, "Expose yourself! Lift your shirt bravely up to your clavicle and you too can be part of the vanguard!" I'm only saying that it's appropriate for a changing culture to have changing mores.
Jennifer, I think, said something I've been thinking about: that it's hard for older men who grew up thinking that breastfeeding should be private to accept public breastfeeding now. Really, I'm not out to catapult anybody's grandpa into ventricular fibrillation. But her comment makes me reflect on eyebrow piercings. (What, your grandpa doesn't have a pierced eyebrow? Maybe it's his navel that's pierced.) I went to high school in a little Appalachian town where it was edgy to have two holes in one ear. For a long time, the sight of someone with body piercings made me flinch. And a tattoo? Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P (and that stands for provincial). These days if I thought that way about everyone with body piercings and tattoos I'd be needlessly worried about a sizable chunk of the 18-34 demographic. I've had to discipline my thinking: other people's exterior decorating is not usually my business.
My parents and in-laws have had a lot of trouble getting accustomed to their younger daughters' piercings ("I can't stand to look at that THING on her face," they say), and it may well turn out that it's harder for me to adjust my attitude in my fifties and sixties than it has been in my twenties and thirties. Maybe it's more difficult for our hypothetical older man to get comfortable with the sight of a nursing baby than it was for me when my friends began having babies. But breastfeeding is so important -- not only to mothers and babies but to our whole society as it tries to slow the health-care-cost juggernaut -- that I think it's reasonable to ask people to try.
So I'm curious -- what's your take on the discretion issue? Here's another voice -- a woman who chooses not to nurse discreetly. I'm guessing many of you will disagree with her; you may well disagree with me too. Tell me what you think.
Recent Comments