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If you pay attention at all to the parenting drama that goes on incessantly all over the internet, you know that sometimes little children (boys and girls alike!) pretend to breastfeed their dolls, and that sometimes people who don't breastfeed are totally squicked out by the very thought.
If you pay attention to discussion on child-raising that goes on incessantly EVERYwhere, you know that many people think that animals all do it by instinct, and that therefore humans should be able to do so as well. (This may or may not coincide with "don't give your child toys that train them to be mothers, are you a misogynist/do you want your son to be gay?" depending on the general tenor of the conversation, see "drama".)
Now, the part about animals doing it all instinctively is dead wrong, at least for mammals. I have personally seen what happens when cats kitten too young (I once had somebody wax poetic about why teenage motherhood shouldn't be the upsetting thing it often is to grandparents, because, "after all, nobody worries when their young cat gets pregnant", and quite aside from the fact that he's comparing teenagers literally to alleycats, anybody who's seen the fallout from an adolescent cat having kittens DOES worry), or when cats who were abandoned or mistreated by their mothers have them. And I've read the same old studies everybody else has about monkeys "raised" by wire mothers instead of real ones - the long term effect was monkeys that could not parent their babies. (Not to mention, human cultures, even "traditional" ones, all have varied ideas of ideal child-rearing. So... yeah.)
But to tie this into my first paragraph, yesterday I got to see an interesting sight.
See, Mama cat has long since weaned her kittens. She did it kinda abruptly, actually - instead of gradually letting them nurse for shorter and shorter periods of time, she just went straight to growling and hissing at them if they tried to suckle.
Naturally, despite it having been a month already, the kittens haven't given up. They still keep trying to tuck their heads under her legs! And they get swatted for the effort, too.
Yesterday I got to see three of the remaining four kittens enthusiastically cuddled down nursing on the fourth - a neutered male. His fur was sopping, and he even flopped over in that classic "Yup, milk for everybody!" position. His remaining brother outweighs him by a good pound and a half.
I've seen, in the past, a friendly and accommodating tom "babysitting" kittens to the point of letting them "nurse" off of him. (It's a myth that all toms hate and attack kittens. Cats really do have individual personalities.) However, I must say, this is the first time I've witnessed this among littermates!
Of course, humans aren't cats. But when you consider how many of these arguments back and forth are couched in terms of what is and isn't dubiously "natural", it's useful to have a perspective on what other mammals do. Cats, at least, can now be said to have been observed "pretending to breastfeed" in childhood. This may or may not help them be good parents (well, if they hadn't been fixed....) in adulthood. (No doubt other people have seen similar. I just never have until now.)
If you pay attention to discussion on child-raising that goes on incessantly EVERYwhere, you know that many people think that animals all do it by instinct, and that therefore humans should be able to do so as well. (This may or may not coincide with "don't give your child toys that train them to be mothers, are you a misogynist/do you want your son to be gay?" depending on the general tenor of the conversation, see "drama".)
Now, the part about animals doing it all instinctively is dead wrong, at least for mammals. I have personally seen what happens when cats kitten too young (I once had somebody wax poetic about why teenage motherhood shouldn't be the upsetting thing it often is to grandparents, because, "after all, nobody worries when their young cat gets pregnant", and quite aside from the fact that he's comparing teenagers literally to alleycats, anybody who's seen the fallout from an adolescent cat having kittens DOES worry), or when cats who were abandoned or mistreated by their mothers have them. And I've read the same old studies everybody else has about monkeys "raised" by wire mothers instead of real ones - the long term effect was monkeys that could not parent their babies. (Not to mention, human cultures, even "traditional" ones, all have varied ideas of ideal child-rearing. So... yeah.)
But to tie this into my first paragraph, yesterday I got to see an interesting sight.
See, Mama cat has long since weaned her kittens. She did it kinda abruptly, actually - instead of gradually letting them nurse for shorter and shorter periods of time, she just went straight to growling and hissing at them if they tried to suckle.
Naturally, despite it having been a month already, the kittens haven't given up. They still keep trying to tuck their heads under her legs! And they get swatted for the effort, too.
Yesterday I got to see three of the remaining four kittens enthusiastically cuddled down nursing on the fourth - a neutered male. His fur was sopping, and he even flopped over in that classic "Yup, milk for everybody!" position. His remaining brother outweighs him by a good pound and a half.
I've seen, in the past, a friendly and accommodating tom "babysitting" kittens to the point of letting them "nurse" off of him. (It's a myth that all toms hate and attack kittens. Cats really do have individual personalities.) However, I must say, this is the first time I've witnessed this among littermates!
Of course, humans aren't cats. But when you consider how many of these arguments back and forth are couched in terms of what is and isn't dubiously "natural", it's useful to have a perspective on what other mammals do. Cats, at least, can now be said to have been observed "pretending to breastfeed" in childhood. This may or may not help them be good parents (well, if they hadn't been fixed....) in adulthood. (No doubt other people have seen similar. I just never have until now.)
