Well now Time Magazine.. that's umm... some cover!

Cafe Society
81

I saw the woman on the cover on a talk show, and I was struck by how she wasn’t nearly as attractive as she appears on the Time cover, where to me she looked a lot like an idealized version of Tatum O’Neal, as if the photo had been taken on the best day of her (Tatum’s) life. The cover photo has clearly been airbrushed, as the woman looks 10 years younger in real life than she appears (to me at least) on the cover. (although I thought they usually airbrushed people to look younger, not older and more mature)

(That said, my opinion is that this particular mother was much, MUCH more interested in getting her 15 minutes of fame than in actually getting a message about the benefits of breastfeeding out there; She seemed shallow and vain, which I suppose isn’t going to be a huge shock to many people)

82

It seems perfectly clear to me that the child wanted to nurse, and they weren’t so invested in weaning that they wanted to deal with denying nursing requests and the resultant crying, trouble going to sleep, pestering, whining, etc. And before anyone charges in and goes on about how this proves AP means indulging and caving to every one of the kid’s whims, I mean “deal with” as in, providing appropriate emotional support when taking away a beloved, soothing habit, but also not allowing the child to pester and whine about it. Believe it or not, it’s actually way more annoying and draining to be firm and not indulge the child when she whines and pesters, so I don’t blame any parent for not wanting to create a conflict over weaning. There are enough necessary conflicts where what the kid wants is unhealthy or otherwise unacceptable. One thing about parenting for me is not creating battles for hills I don’t want to die on.

83

Smug magazine covers like this make me want to feed my future kids formula just to spite them.

84

Please - marry me. :smiley:

UT

85

That is not clear to me at all just given what was said. Even if that is true, so what. For example, let’s say your kid wants to breastfeed until he’s 9? What if he is 12? At some point, you might have to deny nursing requests, so why wait until a socially and societally inappropriate age to do so?

I don’t know enough about AP to tar the whole thing with the same brush, but your commentary here represents a parenting philosophy that I strongly disagree with. I have no idea how you are as a parent in real life, but you say things that make you seem like a weak and ineffectual authority figure.

Sounds like weak sauce to me. I don’t know how else to describe pussyfooting and avoiding battles with a toddler for fear of them whining and pestering you. Honestly, if you allow your own child to dictate when, and for how long you do something you don’t want to do with your own body, what kind of pushover are you? As I said before, if you want to do it, fine. Just own the decision. None of this, “we wanted to stop, but …” stuff. If you want to stop, stop. You are in charge, there is nobody stopping you, there is no excuse to not do what you want.

86

You make me laugh! Aaaand how many kids have you raised?

Here’s how parenting breaks down in the real world:

Gee, I don’t really want Junior doing X. All things being equal, X is undesirable for me. However, preventing Junior from doing X will result in outcome Y, which is about 10 times as undesirable for me. Since X isn’t dangerous, rude, or morally questionable, I’m not going to raise the issue, since I don’t have much heart to follow through, and therefore raising it and not standing my ground will undermine my authority.

If you think good parenting means fighting every battle, no matter how trivial, to get things the way you prefer them, I expect you’ll be in the funny farm before your kids hit elementary school.

(For the record, when I was like, “Eh, I’m kind of over nursing,” I did things to gently push towards weaning, even though I wasn’t ready to force total weaning cold turkey. When I was like, “Ow, nursing hurts I hate it,” I told my daughter she would have to stop.)

Don’t worry, she homeschools. I assure you, their homeschool community of families will be full of long-breastfed children named Moonbeam and Butterfly, who consider preschoolers nursing to just be part of life, and who revile teasing. By the time he goes to college, I’m guessing he just won’t bring it up much.

Anyway, I’m not going to argue that “AP” parents and especially experts can’t be pushy and judgmental. But honestly, I think most AP-ish people are like me: we just want to be left the fuck alone to parent our own way, without people accusing us of being pedophiles, or constantly pushing us to sleep train our babies, or running ads about how cosleeping is as bad as putting your baby to bed with a knife, and so on.

87

If you don’t put your baby to bed with a knife, how is he supposed to fight off the ninjas?

Honestly.

88

Unsurprisingly, the meme has already begun.

89

My wife is due any day now, but that doesn’t validate my opinion any. I work with kids everyday, and I don’t take shit from them even if I know it will be “annoying” for me. That alone doesn’t mean much, and it, IMO, would make me worse at my job if I went out of my way to avoid conflict with children for fear of creating extra work for myself.

And what is your training in the field? Raising a couple of kids like billions of other (often wrong) people?

That’s my point; you don’t seem to have any heart or ability to follow through.

Every battle? Probably not. But if my wife really feels that she doesn’t want a kid breastfeeding until toddler-hood, yet you cave because you don’t want to deal with the fall out, then either you don’t actually feel that way, or you are a weak, milquetoast parent.

Then why do you pretend it isn’t primarily about you? You said you stopped when it hurt YOU. That’s a perfectly valid decision to make, but don’t pretend this was based on something other than how you feel about the whole thing. Again, do what you want with your kids, just don’t try to sell the public on how you are doing X for your kids when it’s really about how you feel, and what you actually want to do. I notice despite people professing the importance of self-weaning, you only stopped the practice once it became too inconvenient for you. Doesn’t that basic fact kind undermine the rhetoric on this issue?

90

You’ve got me there. :smiley:

brickbacon, I don’t know if you’re deliberately trying to misinterpret everything I’ve said here, or if you really are just coincidentally getting everything confused in the same fashion. Have you ever really felt like you could go for a certain food, but decided it’s not worth the effort of getting up, going out, and obtaining it? That’s all I’m talking about.

But regardless, I would be really curious to see what your prospective parenting philosophies are, and also to see you update on how they work for you as you enter the world of parenting. Would you be willing to start a thread on that?

91

Yes, I get that utilitarian cost-benefit thinking. I don’t necessarily disagree with that in general. What I think is wrong is to make it seem like people are doing this for someone else’s benefit, or because they are acquiescing to someone else’s will, instead of just owning it and saying you are doing it because you ultimately wanted to do it. Furthermore, I question a person’s actual desire to do something when they take few steps to actually achieve the ideal result.

I don’t think your food analogy actually fits because breastfeeding is an active process which you correctly stated, can be more of a hassle after a certain point. It would be like saying you want to stop watching TV, but you feel as though you should just wait until all the shows you like get canceled. Then when someone asks why you are still watching TV, you say, yeah I want to stop but they didn’t cancel my shows yet. If you really want to stop doing something, you can stop. As far as breastfeeding is concerned, you don’t need to wait until a child with no impulse control or judgment makes the decision for you. I don’t know why that is an acceptable or reasonable answer.

Sure.

92

Tiger mom!

93

Cool. I guess MPSIMS would be the appropriate place. Can you put a link here after you start it?

94

That kid will be in school in a year or two, and that pic is going to follow him for the rest of his life.

Hope he’s tough. Mom saddled him with a big load.

95

He’ll just have to suck it up.

96

No he won’t - he is home-schooled.

97

Surprise, surprise.

98

Well I’d…I’d…um, I’d…like to be that kid… :o

99

I am baffled that the title of this article hasn’t gotten more backlash. “Are You Mom Enough?” As if mothers not practicing this are somehow crappy and worthless scum. But then again, truth in images and words don’t sell magazines, do they?

100

Well, that* is *how Dr. Sears presents it.