Time Magazine Article on Attachment Parenting

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16...120521,00.html

And...discuss.

[MrsK]

Ugh! I was just thinking about that article. For the last two days, everytime I've nursed K2, someone asks "Did you see the Time magazine cover with the woman breast-feeding her 3yo?" The picture is awful and meant to provoke. No one nurses like that! The picture emphasises the child's maturity and independence but neglects to show the nurturing that accompanies nursing. It seems to mock attachment parenting. I don't attachment parent and the cover still has me feeling defensive.

[Ladybug]

They showed this cover on the Today show this morning. All I could think about was what life for this kid is going to be like in middle school and HS when bullies are printing and posting this picture all over the locker rooms. Extended breastfeeding debate aside, his "super" mom just painted a huge red target on his back...

[diggitydot]

Meh. To each their own, I guess. I'm more of the school of, "If you have teeth and can ask for titties, you get a damn cup."

It's not something I would consider doing, but I'm not going to judge.

[MrsK]

BTW, what I mean by "no one nurses like that" I don't mean no one nurses their 3yo. I mean that no one nurses with her kid standing on a chair, standing apart from her kid with her hands on her hip, smiling for the camera. Women cradle, hug, cuddle and nurture their kids when they nurse. The picture lacks that warmth and appears to be a defiant challenge rather than a depiction of maternal devotion.

[spotty_dog]

I thought the photographer's side of things was more interesting than all the brou-ha-ha: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/05/10/parenting/

The headline and cover photo were definitely chosen to make all mothers feel defensive (and sell magazines). Doesn't sound like the article was very useful either.

Here's a more nurturing version of toddler hit-and-run nursing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2FZmiKuY

[Ladybug]

An interesting medical jounalist take on the cover:

Jamie Lynn Grumet, the 26-year-old mother featured on the cover of Time magazine breastfeeding her 3-year-old son, has done more this week than become the poster woman for “attachment parenting,” the sometimes laudable movement that advises parents to be physically and emotionally available and responsive to their children. She has shown the limits of such a concept, and the ways in which it can be twisted into a bizarre, contemptible caricature of itself.

Grumet is a model, and models have to have at least healthy dose of narcissism (television journalists like me, too, by the way). But I fear Grumet has more than what’s healthy.

Because she thought nothing of becoming far more famous than she ever was or ever would have been by getting naked on the cover of Time using her son as a prop—letting him, in fact, look right into the camera and be completely recognizable while sucking her nipple. He may never be better-known for anything than for being a breastfeeding 3-year-old on the cover of a national magazine.

Ever.

When he enters school later in his young life he may be ridiculed for it. And these realities hint at a woman who could (and I have not evaluated her) have very poor boundaries and be willing or likely not only to nurture a child, but to absorb him, deny him his personhood and render him no more than her appendage.

In short, it is not at all clear who is the “parent” in the Time magazine photograph. Is Grumet responding to real and healthy needs emanating from her son’s psyche, or is he responding to her potentially outsized needs to be the center of attention and the object of desire (if only for warmth). Who, we can legitimately ask, is feeding whom?

See, Grumet loves being photographed. And she apparently loves having her son breastfeed. And she loves attention. And she’s happy enough to get naked in front of other people (which there may be nothing wrong with—for her). But that may or may not be the case for her 3-year-old boy, which seems not to have mattered to her—at all. And if his will was bent to hers in order to have him suck his mother’s nipple in front of a photographer and makeup artist and art director and all of America, then it stands to reason that his will may be being bent to hers in all sorts of ways—including protracted breastfeeding.

The truth is that what Time magazine may have unwittingly captured and been party to was a grotesque form of psychological abuse—the parading into public of an intimate moment (intimate for mother and child) at the sole direction of that child’s mother, who didn’t stop to think that her child may not be able at the age of three to know what he thinks about the whole thing, much less to stop it, if he wanted to.

Grumet has stained the attachment parenting movement by documenting how easily it can go wrong, when used as an excuse for poor boundaries and manipulation.

In a way, while looking at the Time magazine cover, we are all Grumet’s son and may know something of his possible plight: finding her a compelling and dramatic presence, seduced by her combination of sex appeal and motherhood—unable, in fact, to detach from her.

Talk about a prescription for psychological disaster.

This is self-centeredness at its worst, sold as good parenting. And this is an act of media violence against a child, committed by adult journalists who also commandeered his will (as did his mother), for sensation and profit. Rarely do we get such evidence of how wrong parenting can go, how poorly journalists can behave and how slow we can be to recognize ugliness when it is disguised as something beautiful.


Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com

[spotty_dog]

I call bullshit on the armchair psychiatry and the intentionally triggery phrases chosen. That "analysis" is really freaking offensive with all the broad assumptions being made.

[diggitydot]

I call bullshit on the armchair psychiatry and the intentionally triggery phrases chosen. That "analysis" is really freaking offensive with all the broad assumptions being made.

Ablow is full of 100% asshatery and quackiness. I'm amazed he even has a license. Not necessarily because f this article, but just in general. He's a doucheknob extraordinaire.

[Bittersweet]

Wow, the tone of that article rubs me the wrong way and the sexual focus is downright creepy. I would hardly consider a photo of breastfeeding (yes, even this one) to be “get[ting] naked in front of other people.” Seriously, I’ve been exposed to far more boob watching celebrity news coverage. Look, I wouldn’t publicize a picture of my son breastfeeding but I’d hardly characterize doing so as grave psychological abuse. Breastfeeding isn’t sexual – the end.

[GrayMatterWife]

In terms of attachment parenting: What Diggity said. Exactly.

In terms of the cover: lame. Time has no problem with that metaphor, but they'd never run a political cartoon where a person representing the 40% of Americans that pay no effective federal income tax are sucking at the tit of Uncle Sam. Time just happens to be comfortable with this metaphor, which is vaguely sexist, overtly inflammatory, and overly simplistic.

[scrub-jay]

wow, the tone of that article rubs me the wrong way and the sexual focus is downright creepy. I would hardly consider a photo of breastfeeding (yes, even this one) to be “get[ting] naked in front of other people.” seriously, i’ve been exposed to far more boob watching celebrity news coverage. Look, i wouldn’t publicize a picture of my son breastfeeding but i’d hardly characterize doing so as grave psychological abuse. Breastfeeding isn’t sexual – the end.

ITA, my mind didn't go sexual at all when I saw the cover. I thought of that documentary "Babies" where the mother in Namibia leaned down to breastfeed her daughter (in similar fashion) and like that documentary - I thought: that just can't be comfortable. The cover was meant to provoke and it did. I'm already over it.

[Vanquisher]

I moved this thread to debates.

[Pollyanna]

BTW, what I mean by "no one nurses like that" I don't mean no one nurses their 3yo. I mean that no one nurses with her kid standing on a chair, standing apart from her kid with her hands on her hip, smiling for the camera. Women cradle, hug, cuddle and nurture their kids when they nurse. The picture lacks that warmth and appears to be a defiant challenge rather than a depiction of maternal devotion.

Yes, exactly this, especially "The picture lacks that warmth and appears to be a defiant challenge rather than a depiction of maternal devotion". That is what truly bothers me.

I think it does a HUGE disservice to attachment parenting and misrepresents families that choose to AP. I wouldn't call our parenting style AP but more of a variation on the model. I love the Sears philosophy and much of it has worked very well for our family. I've never nursed beyond a year simply because neither I or my children have been interested in doing so. I don't really care how long other folks want to nurse. Anecdotally, my paternal grandmother nursed my father and uncle well past 4 years of age, it's just what the ladies in their Italian culture did. My maternal grandmother on the other hand had absolutely no interest in nursing and used homemade formula on the farm (can you even imagine what a pita that would be?!). Both grandmothers were the most nurturing mothers you could have ever met, the fact that one nursed and one did not made absolutely no difference.

[SuzySunshine]

Here is the Today show clip.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/261848...85461#47385461