by Ruth Moss

My toddler is nearly twenty months of age and I breastfeed him. Mainly during the night and at weekends, but also before and after work and in the evening.

Already I’ve started getting comments, which I want to explore further. But first let me explain why I am “still” breastfeeding.

A difficult induced labour, episiotomy and blue baby recusitated and sent to special care almost immediately did not get me off to the best start, it has to be said. I also did not get good support for a long time, and suffered with sore, cracked and eventually bleeding nipples and a perma-crying perma-hungry baby. For a while I even expressed practically every feed. It was only due to a chance meeting, in fact, that I eventually found a good support group where my baby’s poor latch was improved almost immediately and pain free feeds became possible.

As a result I decided to become a breastfeeding peer counsellor myself, although the reliance on the voluntary sector to support breastfeeding when the people whom you expect to know their stuff (midwives, doctors, nurses, health visitors) more often than not have very little training in breastfeeding and perpetuate myths, still angers me sometimes. But that’s another story!

Anyway, I was lucky to be able to breastfeed, and aside from all the health reasons, for both me and my child, to continue doing it, there is one huge reason I don’t want to stop.

It would be more effort to stop than to continue.

By this stage, breastfeeding is easy. He is now happy to eat foods and drink water when I’m not there, so no more pumping in work. It’s not painful and now he has most of his milk teeth there is no more experimental biting. I don’t have to worry about whether his cry is for milk or for something else because he can now tell me (“ilk!”) or show me (pulling on my top). He can also now tell me when he doesn’t want milk. Breastfeeding in public I will cover later, but it doesn’t happen as often, because outside is now far too interesting.

The good stuff is still there though; it still acts as a sleeping draft when nothing else will get a tired toddler to sleep; it calms a tantrum, and of course it still contains antibodies that soothe the many colds at this time of year; still has all the fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals he needs in the right order and still enables lots of “stealth cuddles” (he’s not the cuddliest toddler in the world; sometimes this is the only chance I get!)

Again, I know I’m lucky to have this at my disposal. I know the vast majority of women who do want to breastfeed do not get to this stage for a variety of reasons.

So given all of that, why on earth would I put effort into weaning, when eventually there will come a day anyway when my child turns to me and says  “no thanks, I’d rather have an apple / have a glass of water / play cricket / watch telly / tidy the house from top to bottom”?

Because according to commentors on any story about “extended” (or full term) breastfeeding, there are various reasons why it’s just plain wrong. These tend to be along the lines of:

1. After a certain age, there’s no nutritional benefit and it’s just for comfort

2. If you don’t stop at this time, you’ll never stop

3. Various reasons around social embarrassment for the child (e.g. if her/his schoolmates found out) and the “school railings” analogy

4. It’s more about the mother than the child

5. After a certain age, he might actually be old enough to remember it, how much would that fuck him up!?

6. What does your husband think (or, “I wonder what her husband thinks”)?

 

The first two are not the most relevant to a feminist blog but I’ll cover them briefly anyway:

1. Just plain incorrect. Can you name me any food with “no nutritional value” anyway? Even water is needed as part of a healthy diet. But the milk doesn’t change to water, or poison, or malibu; it maintains nutritional value and its composition even changes slightly to make it more appropriate for your toddler, not less. And besides, what’s wrong with comfort anyway?

2. This ties into the “rod for your own back” theory behind many of the more pernicious methods used in childrearing. And yes, it’s incorrect. Children wean themselves. Some earlier, some later. In the end, nature intervenes; once a child has their permanent teeth, it becomes more difficult for them to extract the milk and eventually they have to stop.

3. The urban myth of the mother putting her boob through the railings is just that; a myth. In reality a school-age child would probably nurse before and/or after school. I could see how it could potentially “slip out” to the child’s peers during conversation, but with careful handling such a situation needn’t become a big issue.

However the “boob through the railing” also gets to the heart of one of the issues here; the reason this myth has passed into our consciousness is because we find something inherently disgusting, but also sadistic in the thought of a sensitive part of a woman’s body squashed and trapped by metal. Women’s bodies are perceived as a bit yucky anyway, especially when they leak a fluid; and the glee with which this myth is related I personally think is partly due to this distaste.

4. This is where we really start to see the inherent sexism in the issue.

Let’s examine the phrase: it’s more about the mother than the child.

Before we even get into whether something being more about a mother than a child is always a bad thing let’s look at what else this throws up. The idea is that the mother is trying to curtail the independence of her child by encouraging baby-like behaviours; why? Because the mother prefers a baby to a child in this scenario. But why would we believe that mothers prefer babies to children; where have we got this from?

The younger a baby, the more needy and dependent it is. The less it can do for itself and the more has to be done for it. And because all mothers just love doing absolutely everything, they must love younger babies. And younger babies, though adorable, are less interesting than older babies and children. They can do less; they can’t even smile until they’re a few weeks’ old; they certainly can’t walk or talk. And because mothers actually prefer less interesting to more interesting, they must just prefer younger babies and stop at nothing – even, shock horror, breastfeeding – to keep those children from growing up and being independant.

It’s true some mothers prefer younger babies. Some prefer older. Some prefer toddlers. Some children. Some have no favourite age. It’s almost as if mothers are all individuals with their own preferences!

Anyway. The myth needs debunking; it’s not physically possible to force a child to breastfeed. If a child doesn’t want to nurse, he or she will refuse. The child sets the tone, rather than the mother.

And anyway, even if it was “more about the mother”, is this always a bad thing? Sometimes my need for peace is more important than my son’s need for The Tweenies. We reach some kind of compromise where we’re both happy. Perhaps the mother’s need to reduce her risk of breast cancer is even more important than her child’s need for a natural protection against type 2 diabeties, just as an example. 

And besides, it’s circular logic. We see breastfeeding as something for babies, only because we don’t see toddlers and children breastfed that often. And we don’t see it happen that often, because (amongst other things) it’s not done, because it’s seen as something only for babies. If more people did it, it would become normalised, and we would lose this myth.

5. The child might remember!

This is a curious one as I’ve only ever heard it applied to boys who breastfeed into childhood. What if he remembers? Won’t it ruin his sex life (or sometimes I’ve even heard ”turn him gay”?)

You barely need to scratch the surface of this one to see the sexism. The idea is that grown men have a right to see women’s breasts as purely sexual objects and by creating a memory of breasts being used as something other is removing that right.

Well, personally I would hope my son does decide to nurse long enough to form a memory of it. Maybe then he might be able to avoid this absurd fetishisation of the female breast, which contributes amongst other things to eating disorders, unnecessary plastic surgery, painful bras and breasts not to mention fear of breastfeeding in public.

I’ve also heard the “but after a certain age they get sexual feelings” which is along the same lines. Again, I’ve only heard it used for boys. This ties into those “oedipal” fears that somehow the mother is engaging in an incestuous relationship with her son, and again ties into the “more about the mother than the baby” myth but in a more dangerous way.

It is possible to enjoy a thing for sensual rather than sexual reasons but our “raunch culture” struggles to understand this. If a mother is enjoying breastfeeding, there must be something sexual in it, because it involves breasts and nipples. And besides, mothers aren’t supposed to enjoy themselves!

The sucking that a baby does on a breast is different to that which an adult does (the permanent teeth, remember) and is highly unlikely to cause arousal. However, even in the very rare event that it did, surely the mother, if she did want to continue breastfeeding, could distinguish having the feelings from acting on them?

6. This ties into the idea that somehow the breasts are the man’s property and the man gives his permission for them to be “loaned” to the baby. However, after a while, he will want “his” breasts back!

Sadly, there is an element of truth in this with too many men being unsupportive of breastfeeding because they feel that “their” breasts are being taken from them. This is unfortunate, because a father’s support can make a big difference.

Not to mention the fact this question also makes the assumption that the breastfeeding mother has a husband!

The fact is, the breasts don’t belong to the baby, though she may choose to offer or refuse them to him/her. They don’t belong to the father. They belong to her.

When you next come across a post about full-term breastfeeding, analyse the comments, not just for myth, but also for sexist assumptions and misogyny. Sometimes you need to look deeply but you’ll find it.

Just a note on public breastfeeding. I have found myself recently trying to distract my son, or offer him water / food instead of milk, in public, now that it is easy for others to see he is clearly a toddler and not a baby. Writing this has made me realise that I’ve been doing this out of fear of people’s perceptions; I never shied away from nursing in public when he was a baby; and I’m going to notice next time and examine my motives, and nurse him.