'Time' breast-feeding cover uncovers a parenting taboo?
By Natalie DiBlasio, USA TODAY - Thu, May 10, 2012
Jamie Lynne Grumet, the 26-year-old Los Angeles mother pictured breast-feeding on the cover of Time magazine, spoke on NBC's Today program this morning.
"We knew exactly what we were going to get into," Grumet says. "I do understand why Time chose this picture because … it did create such a media craze to get the dialogue talking." Grumet says breast-feeding advocates are upset about the cover because the image does not "show the nurturing side to attachment parenting."
"This isn't the way we breast-feed at home," she said. "It's more of a nurturing, cradling situation."
Grumet says she plans to breast-feed until Aram self-weans, but she hopes the fourth year will be the final year. Grumet was breast-fed by her own mother until she was six.
"It's a big commitment and its not right for everybody," she says. "You need to do what is best for your baby and for your own family."
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The story has drawn many critics on social media, and from noted celebrities such as actress Alyssa Milano. The controversy stems from the graphic nature of the photo, and from concern from some that the child in the picture is too old to be breast-feeding.
Milano tweeted that she feels the cover "is exploitive and extreme."
"You missed the mark," the actress wrote. "You're supposed to be making it easier for breastfeeding moms."
The picture on the Time cover shows a 3-year-old boy standing on a chair to nurse on his mother's exposed breast.
Parenting expert Joani Geltman says she isn't surprised that people are upset about the cover.
"People have an issue with nursing in public anyway, even with an infant. Here they add a 3-year-old child when most children are weaned between 6 months and a year," Geltman says. "People are up in arms simply because it depicts such an intimate act between a mother and child."
The cover story is about "attachment parenting" a trend that, Time reports, has been on the rise over the past two decades.
Attachment parenting includes extended breast-feeding, co-sleeping and "baby wearing," in which infants are physically attached to their parents by slings.
"To me, the whole point of a magazine cover is to get your attention," Time's managing editor, Rick Stengel, said in an interview with Forbes. "From the moment that we started talking about this story as a cover possibility, it was like I couldn't get out of the meetings. There was so much opinion and passion about it and discussion. What that told me is, boy, this is a story that people care a lot about."
Stengel said he hopes stores don't cover the magazine or refuse to carry it altogether. "I would hope they wouldn't cover it up in any way," Stengel says. "It's certainly a possibility."
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