Our colleague, staff reporter, Maria Elena Baca, saw the chatter on Facebook about the Old Country Buffet breast-feeding story that ran in the Star Tribune yesterday. She wanted to share her thoughts about the incident on Cribsheet.
I'm disturbed by some of the comments I'm reading about the dispute over the woman breast-feeding at the Old Country Buffet. (story here) There were issues about the woman's fiance's reaction to criticism she received, but what I'm bugged by is the attitude I'm seeing, questioning whether the woman should have been feeding her kid in public at all.
Breasts are for babies, people. I highly doubt if she was flashing the world, and thousands of mothers in the US (and world-wide) breast-feed their babies wherever and whenever they happen to get hungry. I did it for nearly two years of my life, in restaurants, coffee shops, church, at the auto mechanics, the MIA, at the beach, at parties, on airplanes (once, next to a guy who was en-route to Mardi Gras) and in Yankee Stadium. I'm hardly an exhibitionist. I bared far less than the model on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition you see at the grocery store. Frankly, I've never seen a woman bare all to feed her baby.
I saw someone comment about self-respecting mothers covering up or going elsewhere. I respected the power of what my body and my child were made to do together. Chances are everyone's seen a breast-feeding mother and didn't even realize what she was doing. It's hard being a parent, and breast-feeding is challenging, but it really is the best thing for babies. Breast-feeding moms should be supported, not criticized. I 'd like to see what the Cribsheeters think about the issue. In particular, since you have dad followers, I'd like to know what they would do to support their partners. Share your thoughts below.
