Oh my gosh don’t look! It’s shocking! There are women who choose to breastfeed three year old children! What will people do next?!!
Never mind the crisis in Greece.
And if you haven’t seen this yet, I’m wondering what rock you’re under.
My unvarnished opinion: this is a lame attempt to have something titillating on the cover. Talk about manipulation. But hey, it’s got a significant portion of the country’s attention. Time’s one up on digital media. Hope they enjoy the moment.
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RAFrenzy 
You’re not a real mom till you’ve tandem nursed. *sniff*
(KIDDING!)
I must be living under a rock! Hey Jazzbaby *high five* and I’ve been glad to keep a skinny 4 yr old hydrated during travels though already grown out of it. Sometimes I wonder how we have survived as a species!
Three years? Saw a documentary once where they went even further than that. It was kind of creepy, to be honest.
@Traxy I think I may have caught the same UK documentary in 2009 too :) a bit intense yeah.
I also wonder if there is any relation to the pose being used to the fact that Game of Thrones featured a character where a 6yr old spoiled boy demanded to nurse!
And hey: Happy Mothers Day!! LOL
My grandfather used to talk about being breastfed until he was FIVE by a WET NURSE. No, I am not making this up.
I sent out a tweet on Mother’s Day saying I applauded this, just to see how many people would get mad at me. I know, I’m such a stinker. But alas, no one took the bait. :-D
This used to be fairly common practice, and if someone wants to do it today, knock herself out. It’s such a non-issue for me, and really, the cover is insulting when I think of all that’s going on in the world. We’re all supposed to be shocked by this? Right. LOL!
It’s about the most silly brouhaha I’v’e ever witnessed.
Glad no one took your bait. :D
Well you know me, Frenz, I was aching for them to do it so I could have some fun.
Sadly, no one played along.
hahahahahaha
But seriously, I took so much flak from family members for nursing my child, period, much less for a full year. One aunt even asked me if I had orgasms from nursing, like it was a perverted activity. I just looked at her and said, “No, one does not get orgasms when an innocent infant is being fed.”
Anyway, the Time cover probably was meant to jar people into that jugular type of discussion. I do think it was right on the edge.
I’m amazed that people still have problems with nursing. It is one of the most silly things to me. I thought that when I decided to nurse years ago and got no support from my mother nor my mother-in-law. But I quickly realized it was due to the era they had children. An era that made nursing a freak thing. Never mind it had been done for thousands of years. LOL! But I was determined to nurse, and my husband was very supportive. I also joined the La Leche League which was invaluable to me on several occasions. I can’t say enough good about them.
Thankfully, my mother and mil quickly became supportive and were great from then on as I nursed three more children. And I nursed all but one of my children for a year or so. The only child I didn’t nurse for a year was cut short by my falling down a flight of stairs and being in the hospital knocked out. If it hadn’t been for that little mishap, I would have nursed her longer. She only got a little over four months.
How long others nurse is none of my business. About the only way it could be is if it were disruptive to me personally.
And I haven’t read the article and probably won’t. I can probably predict what it says.*yawn* Did they get anything in about the family bed? I’m sure that’s shocking too. Ohmygod! A child sleeps in the same bed as their parents?!! The world really is coming to an end!!!! LOL!
One more thing before I stop about this.
Okay, I do have one problem with the nursing issue (besides people needing to butt out of something that’s not their business). In all my years of nursing, I never had ot show my boobs to the public while I was nursing in public. So nursing can be done discreetly, and I DO NOT mean slinking off to nurse in a bathroom stall. I never didt that and thought it was bs that people were made to feel they had to do that.
@Fanny/iz4blue GoT just reminded me of the “Little Britain” character who’ll demand “bitty!” off his mother … ;)
@Frenz It’s strange how breastfeeding has been vilified, considering it’s the natural thing to do, and like you say, has been for thousands of years. There are health benefits to nursing a child too. In pet care, they talk about how important it is for the baby animal to get its mother’s milk the first few days especially, since it’s full of things that boost their immune systems. Why should it be any different for human animals? Nah, I’m all for breastfeeding. It’s just when it goes on for years and years that it becomes kinda weird. A year? That’s nothing. Five years? Err, they’re not babies anymore …
I had a friend who nursed one of her kids until the kid was a little over two and a half. When she started to ween her as she had her older children, this daughter would come to her at night and say, “Just one more night, Momma.” My friend said it was like an alcoholic, “Just one more drink, pleash.” Of course we laughed together when she described it that way, but she knew it was a type of dependency that was unhealthy. Yet it was still so hard for my friend to make the break. It was only when she became pregnant in the middle of all of this that she was able to quickly ween her daughter and the kid is just fine today. About to graduate from high school this next year. Has a great personalty, a real joy to be around, leader in her class, good student.
I’m not saying every case is like this one, but I’ve seen other cases like this, and in all of them I’ve witnessed the kid’s whining was what propelled the parent to keep going beyond the time they would have normally stopped. I believe there are better ways to comfort a toddler than nursing. But since I’m not God, maybe there’s something I don’t know about some of these situations, and I hate meddling in other people’s business. The only time I ever say anything about what someone is doing is when it somehow gets into my business. And to date no one else’s nursing has been an issue for me personally.
What is sad about that magazine cover is the knowing look in the kid’s eyes.
Then there is the other end: when a baby weens itself before the mother is ready! (my friend was lamenting her babies weening themselves around a year or not much longer) LOL parenting is such a personal/individual thing patterns like Frenz mentions above happen with other issues; bedtime for example comes to mind or game time with older kids. Just because one agrees to occasionally nurse an older child, a mother doesn’t have to lose control over her breast, boundaries and rules could still apply I believe. Those boundaries are always the hardest in parenting.
Notabene breast milk tastes like melted vanilla ice-cream (except with health benefits :) my theory why icecream is just above everybody’s favorite treat!
It really is interesting, because I’d decided before my child was born that I would wean him by 1 year. And he naturally stopped expecting the nursing at that time.
The funny thing was that I had a HORRIBLE time emotionally. I went into a small depression for about four months after I stopped breastfeeding.
I don’t know if there are any studies out there on this, but I have to wonder if your hormones go through a wack-a-doodle tailspin after something like that. I cried my eyes out because I had to stop.
And this was from someone who was straight “career person” — didn’t have a child or even one pregnancy until age 38 (one and only) and swore I would NEVER nurse.
It’s the craziest thing. I totally get how and why women won’t stop. I forced myself because I thought it would be best for him emotionally. For me, it was hell.
Excellent point about breast milk being like ice cream!
Heidi, I also had withdrawal from nursing, so I understand completely, and I was also a career woman when I started having children, but I was 30 with my first one.
Net: those hormones are bigger than we are. LOL!
By the way, my “baby” turned 9 yesterday.
I wouldn’t trade that year of nursing for anything. He was never supposed to have been born and was declared dead FOUR times during my pregnancy … and then when he was 3 weeks old, my ex-husband was deployed to Iraq. So this kid and I have been through a lot together.
Somehow I think that the bond we experienced with both circumstances of an at-war dad/then-husband cemented even more with the physical act of nursing. Of course I can’t prove that — just conjecture.
So maybe it was more than the hormones — maybe it was just a realization that we’d made it through two arduous years — first the pregnancy, then the first year of life with the dad away at war.
Funny how this little discussion about the Time article brought this back for me.
Frenz! Go into therapy!
:-D
It’s definitely more than hormones! :) But I also think the withdrawal from nursing is hormonal. It just depends on how it’s done. If it’s very gradual, no problems for most. If it’s more abrupt, mothers feel it much more.
But as to the other, it’s a sweet time, and it does form a bond that I know wouldn’t take anything for with my kids. As for the extended nursing, it does seem very odd to me, and I do have a hard time imagining how that plays out in a healthy way with a kid of five. It just seems like co-dependency to me, but I could be wrong.