Mother Loses Custody of 5-year-old Because She Breast Feeds Him

Great Debates
1

Oooooh, my first Great Debate thread in over a year! I feel so special right now.

Here’s the story: “A Champaign [Illinois] woman whose 5-year-old son was removed from her custody because she continued breast-feeding him, allegedly against the boy’s wishes, risked harming him emotionally, a judged ruled Monday.” (Quoted word-for-word from the Tuesday, December 12, 2000 edition of the Springfield, Illinois State Journal-Register)

Let’s discuss. First of all, as a conservative I’m inclined to see this as just another example of Big Government stepping into someone’s private life and telling them how to raise their children. However, …EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

A 5-year-old breastfeeding! :eek:

I agree that Western society (well, American society) has sexualized the breast unnecessarily. And that nursing is a perfectly natural, normal process. And I honestly try to be tolerant and accepting when I see a woman nursing in public, although I do wish they would throw a blanket over their boob, fer Chrissake. But to nurse a five-year-old is just icky. :eek:

So, let the thread begin. Was it wrong for this mother to nurse her son at age 5? Was it wrong for the state to remove him from her custody?

2

I find it hard to beleive that she could still produce milk after 5 years.
Is that possible?

3

IANAD, but I don’t see why not. I always understood that as long as there was continued suckling, the breast continued producing milk. Isn’t that how wet nurses found employment back in The Day?

4

I’ve tried to find a cite on this in past discussions to no avail so I can only say that “I heard somewhere” that the the average age internationally for breastfeeding was until four. Anecdotally, I have a friend who breastfed until her son was six and says that’s part of why they have a close relationship now (no sick jokes, please :slight_smile: ). I believe you produce milk as long as there is a demand for it and it is an excellent source of nutrition. Nothing to lose your child over.

5

I thought they usually had a kid of their own around the same time as the rich woman had hers, and then breastfed both. Then they went on to be a nanny to the rich woman’s baby.

6

I don’t know, if they can ask for it in a coherent sentence, then maybe its time to stop. :smiley:

7

I will second that EWWWWWWWW! Sounds like Mama has some issues. It has to be dtrimental to a child’s emotional and physical development to be on breast milk that long.

8

And Why would she even want to?
To be on-call like that?

9

Some lucky women can induce latation at the drop of the hat without even getting pregnant. They have been able to nurse adopted babies. One of my aquaintences tried to do this when her partner had their baby (she gave up, it was too much work) and the La Leche League (who I don’t respect) claim anyone can do this.

Another acqaintence of mine breastfed her child until somewhere around 5. Not that unheard of among La Leche Leaguers.

You should be able to raise your kids how you want. You should be able to feed them what you want (provided you are not endangering their health outside the norm - i.e. I feed my kids too much sugar just like most people). Want to raise them vegetarian - fine, want to formula feed a newborn - fine, want to feed a 5 year old breastmilk - fine. The problem here is it was “allegedly against the boy’s wishes.” I think a five year old is old enough to reject the breast and should be allowed to do that. He is old enough to begin to understand the sexual connotations of the act IN THIS SOCIETY. If he wouldn’t breastfeed, how was she getting him fed? Was she withholding nutrition? There is more to this story than we are hearing.

10

IIRC, someone representing the state said the charge was not “child abuse”, but something along the lines of the woman using the child to satisfy her best interests, against his wishes. Struck me as kinda odd phrasing. Action was taken following information given by the kid’s daytime babysitter, who says the kid told her 3X he didn’t want to breastfeed. She also said she and the kid discussed this with the mom, who denies recollection of the conversation.

Also thought I read the kid was 6. 6 or 5, seems a little old. The kid is in school, for crying out loud! IMO, 2, maybe 3 on the outside, is probably a good time to stop. Someone said once, when the kid is old enough to ask for it using proper grammar, it’s time to stop.

I tend to think of LaLeche types as kinda out there, but Mrs D comes back saying extended breastfeeding is natural, and was the norm until just recently. Anyone got the historical/cultural poop on this? Anyone else remember that scene from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” when they heard this story?

11

Here’s a link to the story.

I don’t see how we could comment about the case withoutr seeing any of the evidence that it was harming the child. Is anyone saying that any child being breastfed at 5 can be automatically assumed to be at harm?

12

I know who it was - BF, while I was dithering over my overlong post!

13

Definately more info needed. The issue isn’t if she should or could have still been breastfeeding- it’s that it was allegedly against his will. I, too, am unsure of what that means. Was he forced? Not fed otherwise?

Zette

14

Oh, I remember that story about Gussy in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (a favorite book of mine.).

I don’t know too much about this, but if she wanted him to have breast milk, can’t she pump? I mean, I always understood that you start to ween a child as soon as he starts teething. Otherwise, their teeth can be crooked or something.

15

Is there ever a time when breast feeding is not ok? Take an extreme: Would a mother breast feeding her 15 year old be wrong in your view?

I think breast feeding a 5 year old is definitely skating into EEEWWWWWW territory but I’m hardly an expert on this stuff so maybe it is normal some places. In this society I’d say this is starting to show a mother with some weird issues. However, taking the child away from her in this case also seems extreme. If anything her ‘crime’ right now is being overly doting on her child. Separating them at this point seems extreme.

16

Huh? The average baby starts getting teeth at about six months of age. I don’t know of any medical organization that recommends weaning a baby off breastmilk that early. Now, “wean” in the sense of offering other foods rather than exclusively breastmilk, yes; the current recommendation is (coincidentally) to start offering solids at six months. But breastmilk should be continued for at least a year; the WHO recommends at least two. Some mothers wean when the baby gets teeth because they fear getting bitten, but there’s no medical reason to stop then (and most babies will learn a simple lesson pretty quickly: bite mommy, no milk).

I do think it’s a bit odd in American society for a child of five to be nursing. If nothing else, he’s likely to be going to kindergarten, and I can’t imagine the teasing he’d get if the fourth graders found out about it. But taking the kid away? Absolutely mad… unless there’s something else we’re not being told. (The fourth graders sure have found out now…)

17

Here is the full story from the local paper, which has a lot more detail than the AP clip that salon.com is running.

http://www.news-gazette.com/story.cfm?Number=8452

As I understand it, the boy had plenty of other food–it wasn’t that he was subsisting only on his mother’s breast milk. He is 6 and is in the first grade. He told his babysitter last summer that he “wanted to stop but Mommy wouldn’t let him”, so the babysitter called the Illinois Child Abuse Hotline. This was evidently a situation that the babysitter had been aware of for months, if not years, so it’s not like some teenage babysitter hit the panic button. Reading between the lines of the local account, I detect a certain amount of tension between the babysitter and the mother.

With most serious breast-feeding mothers, when they continue to nurse a child after the age of about 2, it turns into “nursing for comfort” rather than “nursing for nutrition”. The toddler chooses when and where to nurse, usually after “fall down go boom” or, especially, at bedtime. And usually, when he’s ready to give it up, the mother is happy to stop. Having your breasts on call 24/7 can be very tiring, and not always convenient (in church, in the middle of the grocery store, at the library, during a teacher conference for an older sibling…)

Most kids, when they get to be about 3, want to stop being “babies” and start being “big kids”. This instinct is what helps you get them potty trained, and to give up the bedtime bottle. “Only babies wear diapers, only babies still drink out of a bottle, are you a baby or a big kid?”

I find it perfectly believeable that the boy would want to give up nursing but that Mommy, not wanting to let go of her “baby”, wouldn’t let him. I’ve got a 16-year-old baby here that I’m not happy about letting go of (although she’s not still nursing. :smiley: )

But to answer the question, “Is he being abused by this?” I would say, “no”, except in the sense that any child is being abused when he isn’t allowed to grow up.

The people who fling accusations of “unhealthy sexuality” are just being silly. IMO, of course. To me, the issue is, why won’t this mother allow her son to grow up and away from her?

18

Jeff,

5 is EWWWW territory for me, too. I’m not big on breastfeeding after a year or so myself. But I don’t see my comfort level as being the determining factor. There are plenty of breastfeeding moms who feel that society in general thinks the EWWWW factor of breastfeeding is high, even with infants, and feel they are encouraged to bottlefeed for someone elses comfort. The other extreme, breastfeeding is never ok because some people think its icky, is just as scary as the 15 year old.

Can’t believe I’m writing this - I’m the original defender of formula and the bottle. (I’ve breastfed and bottlefed) But I know five year olds who still get a bottle for comfort, too. I don’t think that’s great either, but they aren’t my kids.

As long as mom and child are comfortable (and Dad, too, I believe Dad has a say in breastfeeding) and there are no sexual connotations to it within the family, it isn’t my business…just like family beds aren’t my business, just like nudist families aren’t my business, just like parents who let their kids watch violent TV isn’t my business.

19

And I would also like to say that I think it’s irrelevant to go into “what they do in other societies”. I used to belong to the La Leche League, too, and I heard all the arguments about women in “other societies” nursing till the child was 3 or 4. But the thing is, those societies (it’s mainly the Bushmen of the Kalahari that get brought up) either have a chronic protein shortage, and the breast milk is providing essential nutrition, or the women are using it as a sort of birth control. If you are nursing 24/7, yes, it does tend to suppress ovulation, but it’s nowhere near as effective as chemical or physical contraceptives. (I noticed years ago that the editors of the La Leche League handbook, which advocates breastfeeding for birth control, all have between 4 and 9 kids. Each.)

But “what they do in other societies” shouldn’t have such an impact on “what we do here”. In India they float dead bodies down the Ganges; does that make it okay to send Grandma floating down the Sangamon? In Great Britain there are strict limits on how much you are allowed to criticize the government in print; does that mean we should start censoring all Downstate Illinois newspaper editorials? (An attractive idea, I admit, but hardly Constitutional…)

20

If the News-Gazette story is accurate, I am disturbed by this. It seems to me that the real basis of this is the “Ewww” reaction.

This bothers me a lot. The person who made the accusation, and on whose testimony the case was won (the psychologist appears to be a secondary witness), got custody of the child? That sounds kind of fishy to me - get attached to the kid you’re babysitting, accuse the parents of “abuse,” and presto, you get custody.

The justification for taking this child away could equally apply to parents who pressure their children to play the sport/pursue the career/follow the religion the parent desires, regardless of the child’s wishes. (Heck, it might apply to parents forcing broccoli on their kids - children certainly object to that.) Such parents certainly risk infliction of emotional harm by acting in contravention of the child’s will. But we’re used to that, it’s “normal,” so society won’t intervene.