Reciprocal Stink Eye

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In the fifties, if a woman breastfed her baby, she was thought to be acting like a savage, like she wanted to get photographed for National Geographic or something. Why didn’t she do the right thing for her baby and give her this scientific formula in a can? That modernistic hubris really was something—just as bad as the postmodern hubris we are dealing with now. In the fifties, the woman who breastfed her baby was a woman who got the stink eye. Today it would be the woman who uses formula who gets the stink eye—whether or not she had reasonable grounds for doing so. Now as a pastor my concern is with the stink eye part, and not with monitoring how many calories the babies are getting” (Food Catholic, p. 37).

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bethyada
7 years ago

My support to this. I am both a proponent of breastfeeding and an opponent of smoking. Yet I find the opprobrium towards these activities to be excessive and inappropriate. Smoking is a mild moral failure and far less than the failures of many in the anti-tobacco crowd. And although some women may benefit from trying a little harder to breastfeed, it is not child abuse to bottle feed. The lack of both parents, or lack of parental stability, or the lack of parents of the opposite sex is of far greater issue in a child’s life than whether he consumed… Read more »

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago
Reply to  bethyada

That’s exactly the right way to put it, IMO: “And although some women may benefit from trying a little harder to breastfeed,”

Not making ourselves judge and jury over a mother and father’s decision to breastfeed does not entail conceding the benefits of breastfeeding. This is just another one of those areas where people can’t see the difference between staying out of other people’s business and having no principles.

JohnM
JohnM
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

“This is just another one of those areas where people can’t see the difference between staying out of other people’s business and having no principles.”

And *that’s* exactly the right way to put it. But the problem is, the kind of people who can’t see it won’t hear it either, they’ll just call you names for pointing it out. A good many of those kind of people are fellow Christians. Ditches on both sides of the road.

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

The issue gives the new mother important training and spine-strengthening in handling all the other gratuitous questions and advice that will be coming down the pike: – You’re doing demand feeding? Your baby will become the household tyrant. -You’re doing sleep training? He will never feel secure enough to form healthy relationships. -You don’t make your own baby food? Do you understand what they put into those jars? -You use disposables? Don’t you know we’re running out of landfills? You’re using cloth? Do you know how much water and energy they use up? -You let your baby have a pacifier?… Read more »

Malachi
Malachi
7 years ago
Reply to  jillybean

Been through all that. People can be such well-meaning jerks.

Malachi
Malachi
7 years ago
Reply to  bethyada

The way I see it is this:

God made breasts. On women. (Point of clarification for the confused in La Lala, CA.)
Breasts make milk. Watch a mother dog, cat, pig, cow, drop-in-mammal-of-choice-here do what no one need tell them to do. Breast milk is–how should I put this–oh, I don’t know…made for babies. Note how the puppy, kitten, piglet, and calf seem to have no problem growing up healthy and strong. Not really all that strange, when you stop and think about it.

Prior to the Edible Chemical Revolution, everybody seemed to know how this worked.

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago
Reply to  Malachi

That’s all true, and I agree. However, their baby, not yours. His wife, not yours. So not your place to dispense *or* withhold approval of something that is not life or soul-threatening. Have your opinion, share it with them if the topic comes up, but don’t keep score.