A couple of days ago Dr. Phil aired a show on breastfeeding that had another one of those appalling stories that leave any reasonable person angry and frustrated. Here is the way the show is described on the Dr.Phil website: "Kate, the mother of a 7-year-old, 5-year-old and 20-month-old is still breast-feeding ALL of her children. She tells Dr. Phil that she just can't say no when the kids ask to nurse."
When I see such things, I always want to ask the following questions:
1) Why isn't any one saying that this is child abuse, pure and simple?
2) How is what "Kate" says different from what any pedophile says (it's what the child wants, the child seduced me, the child needed it more than I do, I can't say no to a child who's asking for it)?
3) Where are the social services? Why doesn't any one care about the profound psychological damage this woman is inflicting on the poor children by shoving her breasts into the grown kids mouths?
4) What would happen if we saw images of a daddy putting parts of his body into his 7-year-old's mouth on television and claiming that "this is what she wants"?
5) Why should people be exposed to watching scenes of pedophilia like this one on daytime television? Hearing about it is bad enough but seeing the actual images literally turns your stomach.
6) Why is there such a permissive attitude towards pedophilia and child abuse in our society? Nobody cares about Michael Jackson confessing that he sleeps in the same bed with boys, nobody gives a damn that this woman abuses her children in front of millions of people. How is this all ok?
Showing posts with label breastfeeding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breastfeeding. Show all posts
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Breastfeeding Gone Nuts
Somebody just sent me the following review from Amazon:
"Stop feeding your baby after 10-15 minutes a side? My baby is a slow eater. Why would I deprive him of food? And what's the problem with allowing him some non-nutritive sucking after he's done eating? Breastfeeding is about more than just calories. You have to meet their emotional needs too."
Their emotional needs? Really? Or the sexual needs of an unfulfilled mother who can't get a grown man to suck on her nipples, so she utilizes a poor baby for this purpose? Of course, it's all presented like it's about the baby's needs. It's the baby who enjoys on an emotional level sucking on her nipples. Because the baby told her so.
It's scary to see how people would do anything they please to their children and then justify it all by saying that it's for the children's good.
"Stop feeding your baby after 10-15 minutes a side? My baby is a slow eater. Why would I deprive him of food? And what's the problem with allowing him some non-nutritive sucking after he's done eating? Breastfeeding is about more than just calories. You have to meet their emotional needs too."
Their emotional needs? Really? Or the sexual needs of an unfulfilled mother who can't get a grown man to suck on her nipples, so she utilizes a poor baby for this purpose? Of course, it's all presented like it's about the baby's needs. It's the baby who enjoys on an emotional level sucking on her nipples. Because the baby told her so.
It's scary to see how people would do anything they please to their children and then justify it all by saying that it's for the children's good.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Force Feeding Breastfeeding
In one of my previous posts, I have discussed the patronizing tone most books on pregnancy employ towards pregnant women. One of the favorite topics of such books is breastfeeding. Instead of offering women information and letting them decide for themselves, they introduce a variety of scary stories aimed at shaming women into breastfeeding at all costs.
Pregnancy books are not the only source striving to bully women into breastfeeding. Recently, a new study has appeared linking breastfeeding with academic success. These studies crop up every two seconds, and each one sounds more hilarious than the previous one. Here is the main conclusion of this particular study:
"The study, published in the Journal of Human Capital, found that an additional month of breastfeeding was associated with an increase in high school grade point averages of 0.019 points and an increase in the probability of college attendance of 0.014."
Wow, if only my mother managed to breastfeed me, imagine what heights of academic achievement I might have accomplished. I mean, 0.019 and 0.014 points, that's some serious shit, people. Don't even think of depriving your child of these precious 0.014 points.
I have absolutely nothing whatsoever against breastfeeding. What annoys me, though, is seeing how difficult it is for everybody to just let women decide for themselves. The study I'm quoting based its conclusions on 126 children and arrived at 0.019 and 0.014 points. Doesn't this sound like a statistically negligible result? Is this kind of data really so conclusive and definitive that it needs to be published everywhere? It basically tells us nothing. But how on earth can we forego one more chance to tell women what to do?
Pregnancy books are not the only source striving to bully women into breastfeeding. Recently, a new study has appeared linking breastfeeding with academic success. These studies crop up every two seconds, and each one sounds more hilarious than the previous one. Here is the main conclusion of this particular study:
"The study, published in the Journal of Human Capital, found that an additional month of breastfeeding was associated with an increase in high school grade point averages of 0.019 points and an increase in the probability of college attendance of 0.014."
Wow, if only my mother managed to breastfeed me, imagine what heights of academic achievement I might have accomplished. I mean, 0.019 and 0.014 points, that's some serious shit, people. Don't even think of depriving your child of these precious 0.014 points.
I have absolutely nothing whatsoever against breastfeeding. What annoys me, though, is seeing how difficult it is for everybody to just let women decide for themselves. The study I'm quoting based its conclusions on 126 children and arrived at 0.019 and 0.014 points. Doesn't this sound like a statistically negligible result? Is this kind of data really so conclusive and definitive that it needs to be published everywhere? It basically tells us nothing. But how on earth can we forego one more chance to tell women what to do?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)