In a column in The Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, Rachel K. Sobel writes:

I joke with my other mommy-career friends about the best places to pump. The Chicago airport has amazing bathrooms with lots of space. The toilets have seats covered in plastic that rotate. You know it’s clean when you sit down to pump.

The phenomenon of mothers hooking themselves up to funnels and mechanical pumps in offices or toilet stalls to extract milk for their babies is chillingly inhuman. The breast pump is hideous. Yet, in the unwritten laws of feminism, this contraption is a hallmark of progress and enlightenment, a necessary inconvenience for the normal woman, not simply for the mother facing illness or weaning. A practice that seems to come from the pages of science fiction is now widely accepted as normal.

Breastfeeding is economical and simple. But it’s more than that. The fleeting charms and vulnerability of infancy are savored. A spiritual connection is forged. In an age of technocratic efficiency, there is something wasteful about it, something indolent and un-democratic. Why devote so much time to one? Why sit in a chair and do this mindless thing? Pumping oneself in a restroom is efficient and to the point.

Sobel admits to the strangeness, the bizarre unnatural-ness, of pumping. She writes:

In all honesty, though, I wish I didn’t have to hook myself up to plastic tubing and hear the pump’s electronic whirring. I’d rather be with my baby.

I tell my husband it must have been so much easier in the old days with preordained roles.

The old days. That was when a woman was not a cow.

                                — Comments —

Sheila C. writes:

It’s truly sad that the intrinsically womanly and nurturing task of breastfeeding one’s child is just more fodder for the culture war. For feminists and career women this is merely one more chore to be checked off of their list. Solitary and sterile, they sit enthroned in toilet stalls and feel immeasurably high minded for ensuring their child gets the nutritional best despite time constraints and job demands. What marvelous juggling they think they’re demonstrating as they lament that unenlightened, traditional women have it so much easier. Then there are the peace-love-crunchy granola types who make a point of breastfeeding in the most public space possible, in as immodest a way as possible; after all, it’s just natural now, isn’t it? Aren’t you a sexist pig for noticing my deliberately exposed breasts, when they’re serving their primary purpose and not to titillate you chauvinist sexist pigs?! And, of course, to be truly natural one must breastfeed a child until he’s perhaps four or five years old (that’s how it’s done in the browner and more natural cultures, these women loftily proclaim!); why are you wincing when my son marches up to me in public and loudly announces it’s milk-on-demand time?

I’ve met far too many of both types, and a pox on them all! I nursed both of my children, one for about 10 months and the other for 6 months; although I had high-minded plans of weaning directly to a cup at about 18 months, my older one just lost interest and my younger one’s endless colic wore me out. One of the many benefits of breastfeeding, for me at least, was its portability. It was never any problem to find a dressing room in a store, and usually a bench anywhere in a mall as long as a discreet blanket was properly utilized. A breast pump is not intrinsically bad, of course, and is vital to the mother of a premie. I used mine when I knew I would have to miss a feeding, or when I was struggling to reverse a hormonally impacted lack of supply. Nursing my children was never open to question and I treasure the memories; however, their outgrowing that particular need was not something I bewailed but rather celebrated – not for my freedom but for their natural independence and development. I was astonished when my son’s four year-old playmate whined when his mother declined to nurse him in public, and equally astonished when she lamented she was having to wean him because she was again expecting. Almost all the women I had grown up babysitting for nursed their children, and I had not, until then, encountered one who went past the child’s second birthday. My neighbor quickly assured me she was part of a large group of women who believed in unlimited nursing and co-sleeping arrangements, and it was all terribly “natural.”

Laura writes:

There are extremists on both sides. Breastfeeding is not necessary for a child or a mother, but it’s a good thing for many reasons.

Kimberly writes:

I like the way Sheila C. describes the self-important “jugglers” and the sleezy hippies. Both types drive me insane if I let myself think about all the damage they do. And I understand, I think, what she is annoyed with in the “truly natural” crowd, but I think she’s being too hard on them. I wouldn’t pick on mothers who make the decision to give themselves to their babies for as long as they can. Breastfeeding for the first few years of a baby’s life has some enormous benefits.

The thing that is so “natural” about it is the way it creates child-spacing. I’m nursing my second son at 19 months, and my fertility has yet to return! It’s great, and needed, and it’s obviously a part of God’s plan. My poor Grandmother had seven children in the 60’s with one year gaps between almost all of them, because she was told by the doctors to either bottle feed or wean early on. She had it rough, but she was a strong woman. Anyway, I don’t think women should subject themselves to such a pattern if they can avoid it so beautifully. Breastfeeding a young child is precious, and when it’s your own child, it doesn’t seem strange at all.

I got pregnant with my second son when my first son was ten months old. My goal had been to nurse the older son for his first two years at least, because the milk has nutritional benefits (as opposed to emotional) up to that point. I was interested in nursing him longer, but I didn’t think I’d have the patience, and didn’t want to set an unreasonable goal. But when pregnancy came, nursing became painful, and although I didn’t wean him entirely, I cut down quite a bit. I nursed the two of them for three months after the baby was born, but I could barely handle the weak jaws of my two-yeard-old in contrast with the strong ones of the newborn, and I had to wean my older son.

Now he’s 3 1/2, and he still misses nursing! He gets jealous of his little brother for it. My husband (who finds it a bit weird that breasts can have milk, because the breast has been entirely sexualized), couldn’t help but melt when he saw them together with their mother in such a satisfying way. I have lots of respect for women who manage to nurse their babies for several years. It’s not strange when it’s your own child nursing at four or five years. But if a four year old is demanding it in public, I’d say he’s being overly babied.

Laura writes:

Prolonged nursing can be a good way of naturally suppressing fertility (provided it doesn’t hurt marital relations) and sustaining intimacy with a baby, but it’s important to note that breastfeeding an older child can present significant complications when it comes to weaning. After the age of 18 months or so, a child is rapidly developing a will of his own and breastfeeding can become an ingrained habit that he does not wish to break. It is simply not true, as some breastfeeding advocates maintain, that all children under five simply grow out of it naturally. A mother may find herself with a two- or three-year-old toddler who regularly tosses his bottle or cup to the floor and essentially says, “To hell with that. I want the real thing.” It can be an exhausting battle of wills that dispels the halo of warmth normally associated with breastfeeding.

Rita writes:

Breastfeeding my children was an amazing experience for me. There’s nothing like knowing you are still completely nourishing your child in a physical sense and that you are a big part in meeting their emotional needs too. 

I don’t have any problem with women who allow their kids to breastfeed until they are 5+ but the demanding to be fed “right now” in public should treated the same way one would treat other types of tantrums. I think some of those “granola moms” let their kids control them to some extent and the demanding part is what I think needs to be held in check rather than the breastfeeding itself.  

I also think the family bed is very natural…we did some of that. The only caution is, husband and wife need to be able to sneak off frequently for some alone time or the mister is going to feel unloved and neglected. Women have to be really careful to keep their husband as number one in those early child-raising years. It’s a delicate balance.

Sheila writes:

Laura’s point about nursing becoming a habit is an accurate distillation of my snarkery (for which I apologize). The point I was trying to make was that while up to age two or so, nursing is as much a nutritional necessity as it is a natural bonding of mother and child. After that point, it seems to me that nursing is more for the mother’s benefit than the child’s. While I try to respect each mother’s individual choice, I repeat that when a child who is toilet trained and often in pre-kindergarten is still nursing, it is usually not out of a nutritional or emotional need on his part (do those nursing mothers feel equally comfortable with a four year old demanding a bottle?). I would be especially concerned when a child is jealous of a newborn sibling and a mother then feels compelled to continue to nurse the older child out of a sense of “fairness.” Any child, despite all the care taken by the mother, is going to feel a certain amount of competition and rivalry with a newborn sibling where heretofore he ruled the family roost. The infant needs to be nursed, and just as we love all our children equally but differently (as per apples and oranges), we do not have to treat them all identically in an effort to achieve a typically-liberal sense of what Thomas Sowell has labeled “cosmic justice.” Around the age of three or so, most children naturally start to separate from their mothers and attempt more independence; it is a natural progression and one to be celebrated, not feared. Even with the best of will, I cannot view those mothers who nurse children at age four, five, and beyond as doing so to fulfill their children’s needs so much as their own, and regardless of the culture, it seems to me an inappropriate way to keep the child tethered to an overly-needy parent. If you choose not to print this comment because you choose not to deal with the massive brickbats that will surely be coming my way from all nursing mothers of 3+ children, I have no quibble (but neither do I fear the brickbats).

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