That sound you heard the other day was Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, spinning in his grave. Time magazine used to be a news magazine which dealt with serious issues like “Richard Nixon” and "the national debt" (“Richard Nixon and The National Debt” would be a good name for a band). It has now become another magazine of “Hey, look, it is a woman’s breast!”
The “topic” for the “cover story” of this week’s Time magazine is “attachment parenting”, which apparently has something to do with an attractive young woman having her son’s mouth plastered over her breast. Back in my early child rearing days, we would have said that this kid was “bellied up to the bar”.
It is kind of shocking (the cover photo- not that Time magazine is still in business) because most mothers try to be a little more discreet when it comes to nursing their children. The mother has an expression that conveys “Yeah, he’s walking and talking and nursing. What are you going to do about it?”
Well, you can’t do anything about it. Time magazine has to sell magazines and shocking people at the grocery check out is one way to do it. “Marge, I’ll get the Freedent. Holy Guacamole! It is a hot semi-topless woman with a three year old stuck to her. Let’s buy this magazine and learn in depth about attachment parenting”.
You may be asking yourself, what is attachment parenting all about? Besides a philosophy from a group of people that we used to call "stupid hippies". According to the Attachment Parenting International website, their long rang vision is “to raise children who will become adults with a highly developed capacity for empathy and connection.” This is much different from my long range vision which was “to raise a child who will become an adult and move out of the house.”
There are eight principles of Attachment Parenting. I had one principle when we were raising our son: let’s make it to another day and see what happens.
Our son, Ben, had every childhood malady known to man as a baby. He had ear infections when he didn’t have pneumonia and would be the first kid on the block to get chicken pox. He had asthma so severe we had to take him to a Children’s Pulmonary Specialist to rule out Cystic Fibrosis. As this doctor examined the nine month old Ben, he said these words which I will always remember: “He has a lot of boogers”. I was expecting something a little more clinical sounding.
My wife did not nurse Ben. I majored in History in college and while I had a job I didn’t make enough to support us on my salary. Lori worked in the office of a warehouse where she was the only woman. She felt uncomfortable about the idea of using a breast pump at work and then storing the expressed milk in the warehouse's only refrigerator. It would have been a disaster (“Sorry Lori, I drunk that milk you put in there. I think it means we're married”).
Of course, none of this matter to the women I called “Breast Terrorists”. These were new moms that felt the joys of breast feeding so much that it was their duty to make all non breast feeding moms feel guilty. ("Studies show that breast fed babies are more likely to attend an Ivy League school while the non breast fed babies end up at places like Kennesaw State. Non breast fed babies also grow up to be murderers. Just so you know.") These ladies were big on whipping out their mammary glands at a moment’s notice so everyone could share in their nursing experience. It got old real quick.
My mother once told me a story about breast feeding. After my oldest brother was born, my Dad took her and the new baby to see kin in East Tennessee. (Yes, my Dad was from East Tennessee and my Mom was from the Mississippi Delta. What a gene pool) My mother was a modern, Betty Draper-ish woman that used formula. Well, they ran out of formula and they stopped in at Sam Drucker’s General Store in Hooterville. Mom went up to the counter and asked if they had any formula. “No!” the lady behind the counter bellowed, “We feed by the [comical word that rhymes with “Mitt”] ‘round here”.
To think, that young mom on the cover of Time magazine thinks she is so modern.
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