Gah!

[conuly]

Those of you with kids, or who teach kids, or who have ever been around kids, or who have ever even been kids may know that children like to imitate adults. It's a big part of childhood, and an important part of the learning process.

Evangeline likes to pick up discarded Metrocards and "swipe" them before ducking the turnstile. She'll even do it on the bus (putting the card at the dispenser, beeping, and then going to sit down) if there's no line and I let her. Ana used to do that too. The nieces both enjoy putting things in containers and declaring that it's soup, or cake.

This desire to imitate grown-ups and bigger children permeates everything. Evangeline is desperate to read why? Because Ana reads, and I read, and her parents and Nanen read. Ana likes to flip pancakes and head to the corner store by herself why? Because these are GROWN-UP tasks.

And of course, as they're young children, one important part of being grown-up, from their perspective, is taking care of young children. They ask me to put their dolls and stuffed animals "up" in various carriers. They buckle them into the toy carseat. They give them time-outs, and naps, and meals. They catch adults and ask *them* to play the baby as well if they can! And of course, they breastfeed their toys. Sometimes they bottlefeed, and sometimes they clarify that they're using cups, but quite often they put the doll to the chest and make lipsmacking noises to indicate that the baby is having milk.

It's really cute, too.

A breastfeeding-friendly hospital in England put up a poster that features, among other things, a toddler pretending to nurse her doll. Well, why not? It's cute! Awwwww! Who could possibly object to a picture of a kid pretending to be a mom like her own Mommy?

Why I even ask that question, I don't know.

It's offensive. It's unnecessary. It's wrong, disgusting, not normal. NOT NORMAL??? What could be more normal than a kid acting like a kid? What could be more normal than babies nursing - the same way the vast majority of babies that have ever lived have been fed? What could be more normal than any of this?

To my knowledge, breastfeeders don't go en masse to the toystore and take all the dolls with all their toy bottles and then throw hissy fits about how "disgusting" it is. So can the rest of you show them a little... if not respect, at least common sense?

So if you happen to think that the subject matter of the poster is totally okay (for crying out loud, the shirt isn't even lifted!), there's information on how you can write to the hospital to lend your support here.

Comments

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Couple years back a bunch of breastfeeding supporters went/wrote to Target to protest their sale of baby onesies that said things like "Formula for Success" with a baby bottle.

I did also run into one LJ user whose child received a baby doll with a bottle in its hand, so she sawed the doll's hand off, but that's obviously a lunatic outlier.

[conuly]

I see a difference between dolls-with-bottles and "Formula for Success" onesies, though I'm not sure I could articulate it clearly.

And yes, in any group of people some of them are going to be way way way more on the fringe than the most of them.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'm not a doctor but I'm fairly sure that while in general breastfeeding is best for babies, it is actually better to be bottle fed and not have your hand sawed off than to be breast fed and have your hand sawed off. I don't think the benefit of breastfeeding is larger than the benefit of not having your hand sawed off.

I totally support breast feeding, but I do wish some people would remember that there are exceptions. I know of various cases where breast feeding was not an option. In most, it was because the mother should not breast feed, where getting human breast milk might still be an option. But in another case, any breast milk would have been harmful to the baby and the baby required a very special formula (and lifelong avoidance of all milk products). The problem is that people can be so nasty to parents who aren't breastfeeding without any knowledge of the specific details. On the other hand, people can be so nasty to people who are breastfeeding and there's no justification I can think of for that.

I think I'd just like more civility in general.

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's really fair to have that poster in a hospital, though. Quite often, if the mother/baby have to be in hospital at all, there's something wrong and breastfeeding may well be proscribed. They don't put posters up in Rheumatology saying "Walking - it's normal!" or in Endocrinology saying "Sugar - it's natural!". Especially given the elaboration that they were planning on charging for formula milk - remember, this is England. The stay in hospital to give birth is entirely free of charge, and the mother receives free prescriptions for 12 months after giving birth - so what on earth gives them the right to decide that they can arbitrarily charge for one single part of it just because they have an agenda? That's not how the NHS works.

[conuly]

In England, don't they give birth usually in hospitals as in the US? And don't parents usually have to pay for formula anyway?

In the US, formula from hospitals isn't free. It's paid for by the formula companies as a way to discourage people from breastfeeding - and it works. Meanwhile, people who are formula feeding pay more because they're paying for the formula companies to "charitably" give out "free" samples. No such thing as a free lunch.

[conuly]

Yeah, I just re-read the article. The plan is to charge "new mums" for formula - which, if the meaning is the same as "new moms" is in the US, means not "people with babies who are already sick and may be having trouble nursing" (in which case the *first* answer should be to find out why they're having trouble nursing, not to tell them to quit) but "women who are giving birth, liek whoa".

Formula isn't a prescription unless it's medically necessarily, which thankfully isn't very common. If it's handled by the social net at all it should, shouldn't it, be handled by the same folks who handle baby clothes and carseats and food, not by the people who handle doctor's appointments and vaccinations and medicine. (And I don't know what provisions England has for helping poorer or not-so-poor families with those things, so I don't know how much of that the government should pay for.)

[stexgirl2000.livejournal.com]

Have these people not seen toddlers who pretend to breast feed their dolls or stuffed animals? It's the same thing as kids pretending to feed their dolls or stuffed animals with a bottle or a tea cup or a sippy cup. I've seen lots of kids do it, boys and girls, especially if they have a younger sibling and see mom breastfeeding.

:headdesk:

[conuly]

Judging by the comment that runs "I've never seen a child pretending to breastfeed in this way" and continues from there with far more offensive examples of what a child might emulate...

No. No, they have not.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Um, actually, I've never seen a child pretending etc.

Then again, I spend very little time around children--chance encounters in the grocery store are about it.

I will note (under the "have been kids" category) that I didn't learn about breastfeeding until I was twelve or so, and then it was through critical commentary from family about an older cousin who used to go shut herself in the bedroom to breastfeed.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Having been a teacher of young children since the 70's, I can tell you I've seen plenty of children pretending to breastfeed their dolls. Mostly it's when Mommy's nursing a new sibling, but other times too - children who've grown up in communities where most Mommies breast-feed just naturally assume that breast-feeding is the way it's done.

Heh, I have a very amusing recollection of one little girl who often went about the preschool classroom with her favorite doll stuck inside her shirt, upside down with the feet sticking out under her chin, which looked very odd. From time to time she'd 'nurse' her, holding her by the feet and making the little smacky breast-feeding noises. Funny to think that that child is a grown woman now, and quite possibly a mother - I hope her nursing technique has improved! :)

IMHO people who get their panties in a wad over this sort of perfectly ordinary thing need to get a life. Yes, children imitate their Mommies caring for babies; the most interesting thing (to them) about that care is breast-feeding; therefore they imitate breast-feeding when they're playing with their dollies. This is not rocket science. Nor is it 'sexualization'; breast-feeding is about food, not sex

[ncp.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm one of those crazy fanatical breastfeeders who mutters under her breath every time I see a baby being given formula. But I'm sure I get lots of people muttering under their breaths every time they see me nursing my toddler at the park or the mall or wherever the hell he gets hungry, so...

[l33tminion]

That raises an interesting question in my mind: Are "lactivists" actually doing anything to counter the fetishizaiton of the breast (which seems like a fairly recent cultural innovation and the root of this particular problem)? Is there anything that can be done along those lines?

They are certainly all about getting women the right to nurse in public, but I'm not sure mere exposure to nursing will make breasts seem less sexual, hence people will continue to be uncomfortable with breastfeeding because lots of people are awful at context.