Time magazine created quite a controversy with the breastfeeding cover they used for this week’s issue, says ABC News. The publication placed a picture of a young woman breastfeeding her 3-year-old boy in the attempt to determine the right time to wean the baby.
The subject of breastfeeding has always caused heated discussions among new moms. There are women who consider that the best way of showing your love to the newborn babies is by feeding them the natural way, while others prefer to bottle feed them as soon as they are born. The main argument provided by supporters of breastfeeding is that this method is healthier for the child, implicitly stating that women who prefer nursing bottles are not good mothers.
Time magazine took this argument and pushed it to the limit in the attempt to suggest that breast feeding doesn’t necessarily make you a good mom. For that, they used a picture of Jamie Lynne Grumet, a 26-year-old mom who breastfeeds her 3-year-old son. Since the boy is too big to be cradled in her arms, the child is standing on a stool looking straight into the camera while suckling on his mother’s breast.
The photo was inspired by the concept called “attachment parenting”, a term that was introduced by Dr. Bill Sears in his 1992 work, “The Baby Book”. According to him, mothers need to breast feed their children for a long period of time, to share the same bed with them and to “baby wear” them as long as possible in order to make sure they grow up healthy.
As expected, the provocative cover caused various reactions on behalf of readers. Some were repulsed by the photo, while others liked it very much because it manages to capture the readers’ attention. However, most people agreed that the magazine should have used a more mature model for a better understanding of the concept of “attachment parenting”.
This is not the first time that the American weekly publication has used a breastfeeding mom on its cover. The first time they did this was in 1999 when a similar photo was used to discuss war in Kosovo. Later on, the magazine featured breast images on its cover to introduce stories related to mammary cancer.
