Usborne Puberty Book tells children that breasts exist to make milk and to make girls look grown up and attractive

Today 10:09 SophoclesTheFox

You're creeping me out now, new daddie.

Me too. Dress it up anyway you want newdaddie, you're giving me the cringe.

And if you're talking about evolution, believe me, The Cringe is a very highly refined evolved tool. And I trust it implicitly.

Ok, so newdaddie has a thing about breasts.

You're creeping me out now, new daddie.

How?

The father taking an active part in parenting part. Or the attentive husband facilitating a uninterrupted sleep for his hard working wife part?

You're creeping me out now, new daddie.

Dw and I are nurturing future leaders, you can do whatever you want with your dc

Gosh, you're going to be mighty disappointed if they turn out not to want to lead, and how do you do this?
Please start a new thread on nurturing leaders, i'm sure we'd all love to know.

What does PFB mean?

Dw and I are nurturing future leaders, you can do whatever you want with your dc.

sure you are. I love a bit of PFB

@Scrumplestiltskin I was actually born in a culture you describe, warmer climate, and it is a matriarchy . (Although due to colonisation the state is arguably patriarchal but the monarchy and peerages are matrilineal)

Ironically a lot of well meaning western scholars completely misunderstand our culture, or wilfully misunderstand it to fit their own political narrative.

Men from my culture adore breasts as do I. The major difference there is balance and decorum. I appreciate dw breasts in a sexual way but then I can also have no sexual feeling while I undress dw and latch dd on her breast for a night time feed while dw is sleeping. That is not a paradox it is decorum.

My understanding is that men from my culture view breasts (and bums and the rest of the naked female form) the same way UK men appreciate lips or eyes or other sexually attractive features that are uncovered in the UK.

NewDaddie - as already stated, I think you've got the cause and effect the wrong way round. But even if you were right - do you really think that the wording 'to make girls look grown up and attractive' was appropriate in the context of a book for boys (or girls either... I wonder what the 'sister' volume said about breasts?). Would you actually put it in those terms to a child entering puberty?

oops, I missed the fact that I've been approved by newdaddie Thanks!

I don't think I can leave it at "agree to disagree", though. I actually think you're wrong when you say this: "to put it simply women have breasts because men like them". You just can't say that with any measure of confidence. I'm not disagreeing: I'm saying that you have no credible evidence for that claim, therefore that claim is best not made, particularly in books aimed at children where it functions in a damaging way.

Why then, NewDaddie are there so many cultures who find breasts entirely uninteresting, sexually? Something which is particularly common in cultures where women habitually go bare-chested.
This doesn't make sense, if breasts are supposed to be attractive to males. You would think that in cultures where they are visible constantly, they would be considered sexually appealing, but the opposite is true.
It seems far more likely that as humans in cooler climates began to cover up more with clothing, and eventually wear clothing consistently, the covered (sexual) parts of the body became fetishised to a degree.
(For example, even slender ankles became sexually attractive for a time, due to cultural factors, and being covered.)
People who say breasts are "supposed to be attractive to men" sound like they're working backwards from an already presumed conclusion, and seeking justification for it.

'breasts should definitely be of no interest to boys/men brigade'

Nobody has said this.

I'm going to stuff my bra with the straw from your straw man. Scratchy, but righteous.

Who says that boys/men shouldn't be attracted to breasts?

I'm wondering which of the very righteous 'breasts should definitely be of no interest to boys/men brigade' ever wear push up bras, incy wincy bikinis or chicken fillet bra fillers?

I put you on the list of people who can have a mature discussion with opposing views without lowering themselves to personal attacks.

Have a good weekend @SophoclesTheFox I'm happy to agree to disagree with you.

Christ alive, don't put me in your list of people who agreed with you newdaddie!

I very very emphatically do NOT.

There is a MASSIVE difference between reason and purpose.

You can attribute reasons to evolution but it has no purpose @Batteriesallgone gets it.

You also get it @larrygrylls, @Crumbs1 @SophoclesTheFox and other pp who stayed on topic. I respect the alternative theories but I still believe usborne is right based on my assessment of the balance of probabilities.

Evolution is nothing more than a correlation of biological stochastic processes.

I fully expect my confident intelligent dd to be able to cope with that knowledge

Dw and I are nurturing future leaders, you can do whatever you want with your dc.

Wtf
The book has no place anywhere near boys

Ben Lui and Some Dyke - thank goodness for you and a couple of others. Fact is there is still scientific confusion surrounding WHY human breasts are constantly 'visible'.

It is not proven accurate and not suitable for a kiddies book, even if it had been. This is not demonising men.

I haven't read the book but I also wonder if they tell boys that when girls go through puberty they also have hair in the pubic area as well as underarm hair and hair on the legs. Because why did women evolve to have hair in these areas?

Going by what was written in this book, if they did it would probably say something like

"when girls go through puberty they also have hair in the pubic area as well as underarm hair and hair on the legs. However many men don't find body hair attractive so girls often remove this hair so that they can attract a mate and fulfill their purpose"

Is that magazine for real Griswald ?
It's an interesting idea that women's bodies have evolved purely to be more attractive and fun for men

I remember a few years back a poster on here who'd lived in Kenya (IIRC) saying that the part of the country she lived in, women typically went topless, and breasts were seen simply as a useful bit of the body with which to feed babies and weren't sexualised. So much so, that when missionaries tried to get women to cover up, the prevailing attitude was one of puzzlement: "what, you mean white men get turned on by boobies [deliberately using the infantile word here, because in context that's what the women used to get their point across]? That's just weird. Have they got some sort of infantile fixation and never outgrew obsessing about their mother's breasts? Our men grow out of that by about age 3."

That's the thing about evo-psych stories. Not only are they basically just-so stories with a bit of pseudo-scientific window dressing, typically they're also very western-centric just-so stories.

The book seems to have come out in 2013 - is this the first time anyone has noticed this section, or have they republished it changing this?

feed children so they survive beyond infancy

It makes me laugh when men of the Desmond Morris ilk think that all the wobbly bits of women evolved to make them more attractive to men without asking the question why are men attracted to them in the first place?

Breasts evolved to make breastfeeding easier, probably as an indirect result of the loss of fur at some point in human evolution. If men like boobs it's because they mark the woman as more likely to be able to feed children beyond infancy, or because they've become fetishized in our society. Or both.

But it's not like men decided they like boobs so women decided to grow some. I mean FGS!

Next they'll be saying that women lost their fur because men like women with smooth silky shaved legs!