Breastfeeding exposed

Quote

Badinter shows how the claim that "natural is best" is used to justify a raft of regressive parenting behaviours, which unite in their attempts to persuade women to shoulder the primary burden of child-rearing and domestic responsibility. Chief among them is the promotion of exclusive breastfeeding, which, like "baby-wearing" (carrying an infant in a sling for extended periods to mimic mothers on the savannah) ties a woman to her child for hours every day, excludes the father and, if continued until to the WHO's recommended age of two, makes returning to work difficult. (La Leche League and the NCT are traditionally opposed to expressing and bottle-feeding, citing the chemical content of bottles and the child's potential for "nipple confusion", not to mention the hysterical revulsion that surrounds formula.)

Parenting manuals based on Bowlby's attachment theory prioritise the bond between mother and child, sideline the father and keep women away from work. Co-sleeping (sharing a bed with a small child) restricts a couple's sex life. Naturalism promotes the view that women are emotionally and physiologically constructed to be their children's primary carers in a way that men are not, and that mothering is the most significant of a woman's capabilities. Badinter is brave in her admission that this view has been bolstered by a wave of essentialist feminism that located female power in women's physiology and held up maternal instinct as the basis of a revolutionary new matriarchal society.

Quote
yummynotmummy
The "Mummy Cult" is very much alive and well here in the UK, I have a Facebook friend who is a militant beefer, and every status update is about where she beefed that day, where is welcoming to beefers, where isn't, and naming and shaming women who either won't beef "obviously for vanity reasons" or can't beef "didn't try hard enough" or "should have come off their medication for the sake of their chyld". Another way of controlling women's bodies, and sexuality, methinks. But the sinister part of it is, that this is mostly perpetuated to women, by women.

Women are supposed to sacrifice everything for their kyds these days, their identity as an individual, their bodies, the lot, and if they don't they are bad mothers. I would much rather be an eeeebil CF bitch than try and negotiate my way around trying to be a mother and still retain an ounce of common sense in this world.

Quote
terrierist activity

hankyou Same here!
Clue - if it has teeth it isn't meant to be on the tit!

Quote
thom_c

Quote
terrierist activity

hankyou Same here!
Clue - if it has teeth it isn't meant to be on the tit!

You were saying?

Quote
CFinPenthouse
The fascinating thing about non-ambitious cows who just want to wander their home pastures is that they are insanely jealous of women who actually do something with their lives. They want society upended so that smart women who are more than a uterus and an udder are squashed under the lowest glass ceiling. This way, they can continue molesting their male sprogs and shoving tits in grown children's faces but still feel confident that no other woman is doing something, anything different.