Oh no, wet nurses. Let us all panic. And run in fear. Because boobies. :rolleyes
Well thank god they blanked out those redheaded kids’ faces, making it literally impossible to identify them.
Exactly. If someone were getting milk from a milkbank there wouldn’t be any controversy, but as soon as there’s human nipples involved, it’s cause for concern.
“Human nipples”?
Now I’m imagining the public outcry if someone were letting their kids nurse from a pet goat.
Proof that “breast feeding” children / babies is so uncommon that people freak out about it.
PS. It’s been around for some time now…
I admit, my first reaction was one of shock…but I couldn’t find a rational reason for why. I’ve concluded that my knee-jerk reaction is merely based on the cultural norm that we need to overcome when it comes to breastfeeding and nothing to do with logic or good sense.
This is why it is always good to look at WHY we respond a certain way.
Not making a moral statement but the friends kid is a year and a half old, didn’t start breast feeding the friends kid until after most physicians recommend weening.
Note: I support breast feeding and support doing it in public as kids got to eat. I just wanted to see how folks felt about this one way or another.
shrugs So long as the friend consents, and there’s no disease or drugs that pass through the breastmilk who cares? Wetnurses were once quite common, and in some other societies women share the task of breastfeeding, so not really seeing the big deal unless it’s not consented to or there’s a medical reason not to.
Not to mention, some women have more trouble breastfeeding than others, so if a healthy friend is willing to help for free why not take the help?
Perhaps I’m too pragmatic (I don’t have children FWIW).
They aren’t blurred out in the mother’s original FB post, why would they be blurred out here?
Meh, when is or isn’t the ideal time to stop is up for a lot of debate. Some people definitely take it a bit far. My mom’s approach was “when the kid is old enough to understand you telling them they’re too old for it, it’s time to stop.”
Which seems fair enough, as it relies on the child’s development as opposed to an external metric.
I don’t really have an opinion on the age thing one way or another, babies are pretty adaptable. So it’s hard to make a strong case that weening a bit early or a bit late is going to have much difference.
10 years old? Ok, yeah… sure we can mostly agree that’s a bit much plus wow would your breasts be tired.
But one year, year and a half, two years? I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes and if the kid isn’t eating other food well or tolerating formula well, it might make more sense to let it breastfeed a bit longer until it can transition to other foods more easily.
I’m not a doctor OR a mother, so take all that with the appropriate amount of salt.
I wonder. I support breast feeding but I wonder when or if the continuation of breastfeeding in to early adolescence is harmful.
Isn’t this exactly what the term “bosom buds” means? Sheesh, it’s just breastfeeding, it’s not like it’s something new or unseemly, and anyone who can’t stand the idea needs to punch themselves in the genitals until they figure out how to be a decent human and just not give a fuck about normal stuff.
The debate comes up not from the medical industry, which is pretty clear as to where the benefits end, but from communities that have no scientific training but feel that owning a child means they are some how endowed with an expertise that comes solely from anecdotal evidence.
Is it going to hurt a child? Maybe not. But it isn’t going to help after a certain time frame either. At some point, we need to admit it is more about the mothers needs than the kids.
That phrase right there is the most problematic thing I’ve heard this whole thread.
Children aren’t property, and parents don’t own them. Parents are stewards of their children who have their own set of rights as people.
Absolutely this should be perfectly fine, as long as you have the parents consent (presumably most parents don’t want food of unknown origin regardless of whether it comes “direct” or otherwise).
I imagine that the reaction is “weird” for the same reason it’s “weird” when adults want to drink breast milk: It’s just not the social norm. AFAIK there’s never been shown any negative health concerns from breast milk collected from healthy individuals regardless of age, any more than there is of, say, cow milk collected from healthy cows, so the reaction of “weirdness” is unwarranted at least at that level.
I suppose though, that because livestock tends to have regulated diets and controlled exposure to contaminants, as well as testing, it’s easier to “know” livestock milk is “clean” versus human breastmilk. Whereas even if you had a willing provider who contended that she had eaten only approved substances and avoided chemical pollutants, short of treating them like livestock (restricting access and movement), one will never be able to prove as much. This isn’t (hopefully?) an issue for people you know, but I can understand how concerns like that might worry people about “anonymous” breast milk, even when it’s been tested.
Imma agree with you on this. It may not be the words they use, but it is every bit the intention when you hear “You can’t tell me how to raise my child”.
No, apparently not. It just means “a friend one holds close to the heart” aka the bosom. It has nothing to do with breastfeeding.
Oh, I thought it literally meant like, buds off the bosom, like in small tribal communities you and your best friends grew up breastfeeding together and everything.
Seems to me the better metric is when the child is able to get a balanced diet through solid food, and at a time which reliance on breast milk or feeding is interfering with the development of getting a more diverse diet, or creating problems with emotional development. But that’s not to say those two ideas are radically different - they’re both based on the child’s development and not on some arbitrary age decided by a pediatrician or some societal pressure. We (by which I mean my wife) stopped at around 18 months and it was not a hard process, which suggested it was about the right time for our kid. YMMV.
