Public Displays of the Personal
Posted in Podcasts on December 6th, 2006
Airlines have had a few incidents lately of breastfeeding and amore on their flights, so Barb and Susie have to talk about it – is it a regional thing, a personality thing, a lack of discretion thing, a flaunting of rights thing, or just a mountain made of a molehill? Commence the argument!
Music: Thirsty by Chloe Day from the album Thirsty
mamaloo, the doula says:
I’m not even finished listening to this week’s podcast and I am compelled to make some comments! (Mark of successful, intriguing discussion?)
Firstly, a right is a right is a right. The right to breastfeed one’s child in any place one is legally allowed to be does not come with a caveat about discretion, other people’s feelings about breastfeeding or anything else. We do not have caveats for freedom of speech, another right of ours protected legally (though, I’m not entirelty certain the the Bush government has not somehow eroded this particular right) which is how people like neonazis are allowed to continue to say crazy and horrible things.
Secondly, it is recommended that we breastfeed our children for a minimum of 2 years in order to confer on those children the greastest health benefits possible. The WHO and every other organization concerned with the welfare of children support this and recommend that mothers continue to nurse their children for as long after this point as they are comfortable with. I nursed my own son for 23 mths and would’ve nursed him longer had it not been for a sudden medical condition that made it difficult for me to continue to nurse him.
Third, I would never expect anyone else who is consuming food and beverages to do so with their heads covered. A child who is eating should therefore not be expected to consume it’s food hidden away from the world. This issue has far more to do with an unhealthy North American sexualisation of a woman’s body than it does with anything at all. If a woman is nursing correctly there should be no visible nipple to the casual observer. And, frankly, we see far more exposed flesh on the covers of general interest magazines at the supermarket and corner store. I’m wondering why we consider OK to show images of buxom women in micro bikinis on the covers of magazine and in music videos, but a nursing mother, who may be exposing perhaps the top of a single breast is villified and chased off airplanes.
I’d like to qualify this all by saying that as a doula, I’m an advocate for women’s rights as they instersect with women’s and children’s health care. I also happen to live in a province where the right to be topless as a female exists.
And, breastfeeding isn’t personal. It irks me that you lumped into that category. Its understandable in this culture why many women would feel shy about nursing in public, but it’s just a baby eating. We don’t consider bottle feeding infants personal.
OK, Now that I’ve purged myself of all that, I’ll move on to the making out part fo the show!
December 7th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Susie Watson says:
Mamaloo, glad to hear your thoughts, now educate me, what is a doula?
December 7th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
mamaloo, the doula says:
OH my gawd! I just heard the “pooping” comment. You know, voiding one’s bowels has NOTHING to do feeding infant feeding. That’s really ignorant to repeat that junk.
Let me point out that if you tried to put a blanket over a toddler’s head you would quickly discover that toddlers HATE being covered while nursing. It’s important forst that the child be able to breathe freely, not get overheated, be able to maintain eye contact with their mother, be able to touch their mother’s face and be able to look around at the world. Had that mother on the Delta flight tried to put the blanket over her child’s head while he was nursing, the flight attendant would have had a child throwing a tantrum on her hands who WOULD absolutely be disturbing the other passengers on the plane. As it was, she stood up for her rights and her husband supported her. As a result, she was illegally remived from the plane.
December 7th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
mamaloo, the doula says:
A doula is a woman who acts as a labour support person for women giving birth. She provides physical, emotional and information support so that women can have, hopefully, safer births, or at least births that more closely resemble their desires.
That is a birth Doula. Postpartum Doulas help mothers after they give bieth by providing the same support, but this time in the form of breatfeeding help, newborn care help and light domestic help so that mothers can become more successful in the early days of mothering.
The role of the doula was once filled by aunts, grandmothers, mothers and community memebers, but as we as a society have moved farther and farther away from a community based approach to family life, the need for a doula has become more imperitive.
If I may be so bold, here is my professional blog where I write stories (though I’ve recently been sick and newly pregnant so I haven’t been able to write in the last few weeks much) regarding all aspects of pregnancy, labour, birth and the postpartum period. I try to help mums with honest, evidence-based information while also marketing myself. I was going to comment about my blog for your blog podcast, but got lost in the needs of life!
http://www.hamiltonbirthrevolution.com
December 7th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Susie Watson says:
Glad to have it, well, I am certainly getting trounced on THIS podcast - must be because I never had kids.
December 7th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Susie Watson says:
This might be a good time to show my soft sensitive side. As these comments are flying through cyberspace, I am actually in the process of making two miniature books for two BABIES. See, I’m not so bad. Here is the poem I am making into book form (7/8″X 3/4″)
Baby Running Barefoot
D.H.
Lawrence
When the white feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,
They poise and run like puffs of wind that pass
Over water where the weeds are thinned.
And the sight of their white playing in the grass
Is winsome as a robin’s song, so fluttering;
Or like two butterflies that settle on a glass
Cup for a moment, soft little wing-beats uttering.
And I wish that the baby would tack across here to me
Like a wind-shadow running on a pond, so she could stand
With two little bare white feet upon my knee
And I could feel her feet in either
hand
Cool as syringa buds in morning hours,
Or firm and silken as young peony flowers.
D. H. Lawrence - 1916
December 7th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
mamaloo, the doula says:
Im sorry to be making so many comments. I must sound rather rabid! Of course, since this is my area of professional interest, I’m compelled to continue the conversation! Haha!
Susie, i don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that you do not have children.
I see this as a feminist issue. By put strictures on normal infant feeding like this, but not holding other public images of nakedness to the same standard, we’re unfailry punishing those women who breastfeed.
Susie, when you insisted that it’s not culturally normal for women to breastfeed in public, I was remined of the other major examples of fighting for personal rights in the US: minority rights in the 60’s and women’s rights in the 70’s.
I would hope that after the examples of those, that having women agitate for the right to freely, without caveats, do something so positive would be supported. It’s seems so self-evident now that “blacks” and “jews” should be allowed to go anywhere anyone else is legally allowed to go, that to put stritures on that would seem so grossly inhumane. I see the right to breastfeed in public the same way. There is no harm to anyone. In fact, the more other women, men and children see breastfeeding in public, the more people will choose to breastfeed their children in future. That is a good thing all around.
I don’t know. Maybe midwesterners have a lot of hangups?
December 7th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Barb & Susie says:
This is Barb and I’m enjoying this!
December 7th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Bernadette in Australia says:
I really don’t see this as being about Susie’s level of comfortableness with breastfeeding (or anyone else’s for that matter).
People use the word “right” too much. Rights can’t be things that are granted…they have to exist naturally.
I think business owners should be able to set whatever rules they want to in their businesses…including airlines telling people whether or not they can breastfeed. make out, knit socks…As far as I’m concerned no one has any rights to do anything in my place of business that I own.
No one would have the “right” to come into my home and breastfeed or make out or anything else…they would have to ask me permission (just for the record…I would give it..I don’t give a jot what you do as long as you’re not physically hurting me or someone else who doesn’t want to be hurt). When did a person’s business property become “public space”? To me, the airline should be able to tell either the woman or the couples to to stop / cover up. If she’s in real public space (ie taxpayer funded space) then it’s a different story…she owns that space as a taxpayer.
But almost irrespective of the above…the notion that this kind of behavioural stuff can be regulated and/or provided as some kind of “right” is laughable…I as a taxpayer do not need to be funding the enforcement of this kind of rubbish.
December 8th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Susie Watson says:
Whew, Bernadette, you saved me from being a total pariah on this one!
December 8th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Bernadette in Australia says:
I figured they could be angry at both of us now Susie
December 8th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
dwight says:
Having a minor in anthropology I would have to agree with Susie about different levels of comfort areas of the country and in different cultures. For example: In Austria no one would think twice about a women going topless in the hot tub. However here in America we are a tad more repressed and she would more than likely be jailed.
This website supported doula’s health claims.
From: http://www.mamashealth.com/women/bfeed.asp
{
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, babies that are breastfed experience fewer allergies, long term protection against Breast Feeding and Crohn’s disease, enhanced brain growth and eye development and protection against colds and ear infections. In addition, mothers that choose to breastfeed reap the benefits of stronger bones, a reduced risk of ovarian cancer and premenopausal breast cancer and an increased ability to lose weight, as breastfeeding burns 200 to 500 calories a day.
}
Considering the health issues maybe it should be almost mandatory but that’s just me.
Lastly I found these two sites that have two different moms still breast feeding their eight year old children. One mom has son and the other mom a daughter; I believe the mom with the son has now been arrested and adjudicated.
Anyway Good show as usual.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
dwight says:
Woops. It would help if I gave the websites.
http://www.breastfeeding.com/reading_room/eight_years.html
http://www.10news.com/news/1551332/detail.html
December 8th, 2006 at 11:18 pm