Because breasts have been sexualised by society, the attitude towards breastfeeding have throughout the decades become divided.
The fact that breastfeeding is a natural act seems to escape many people; instead they think it should be done in private, while some even believe that doing it in public is disgusting.
This attitude trickles down even to the most innocuous things, such as an image of a little girl pretending to breastfeed.
“When one mum recently shared a photo of her toddler trying ‘breastfeed’ a doll, she was expecting a few likes and maybe a couple awws,” said a Scary Mommy story.
Instead what greeted her the following morning a Facebook post from a friend saying she should be “punched in the d*mn face” for letting her child mimic the act of breastfeeding.
Despite wishing to protect her privacy by remaining anonymous, the offended mother sent a screenshot of her post as well as the rude comment to a Facebook page called “Breastfeeding Mama Talk.”
The original post shows her two-year-old daughter Charlotte in a shopping cart, lifting her blouse and pressing a doll to her chest.
Read the full post on the next page
“You know you’re a breastfeeding mum when you look over in the middle of the store to your toddler saying, ‘Baby cry, baby just wants to eat.’,” the caption reads.
In the mum’s response on the page Breastfeeding Mama Talk, she said: “I’m not bashing for how anyone else parents and maybe it is the wording that gets to me, the parts saying ‘it’s the nastiest shi*t of their life’ and ‘I need punched in the d*mn face’ but I am shocked.”
She added that she still breastfeeds Charlotte, while she formula-feeds her five-year-old son Bentley, and that both options are for her “equally wonderful.”
What she couldn’t understand, however, was how someone could see something so innocent as her child pretending to breastfeed her doll as something nasty.
“I would LOVE to know how it is ‘the nastiest sh*t of her life,’” the mother responded. “Breastfeeding is something that is natural and IS normal…How can I or why should I tell her this is wrong when it is what she knows?”
The viral post, which has now received 1.5k likes, saw some positive and encouraging responses from other parents.
“My 5 yr old sits on the couch next to me with her stuffed elephant and nurses her ‘baby’ while I nurse her baby brother,” said one mother. “She also changes her elephants diaper when i change her brothers. She puts the elephant down for a nap when her brother naps. We love our time taking care of the babies in the house together. [sic]”
What this mum’s post teaches us is how important it is to normalise breastfeeding, so that people can see it for what it is, which is natural, and not something disgusting and sexual as other want to portray it.
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