You’d be surprised- I honestly think whether people are interested in whether you breastfed/bottle fed or are continuing to do so past weaning age depends on the people you know, what feeding method is most predominant in your area, etc etc.
I breastfed initially, switched to formula at about 3 weeks, and then ended up relactating later on for various reasons. My experience is that you get judgement and opinions on what you’re doing regardless of feeding method, and it continues as long as your baby is at the age where they’re still taking some milk. Experiences of my friends from different areas seem to vary from mine, so I assume it partly comes down to whether what you’re doing is the ‘norm’ for where you live.
Where I was, the ‘norm’ (certainly amongst my friends with babies) was to try breastfeeding at first, with most giving up by about six weeks, and hardly anyone BFing past 6 months. So, very little judgement when I switched to formula from other mums (because they’d almost all done the same) but quite a bit from older generations. When I then started BFing again I didn’t really experience judgement for it, but I got the impression that some of my friends thought I might start judging them FF (for example, justifying to me why they were unable to BF when they saw me feeding DS). I felt awful that they felt that simply because I was breastfeeding in front of them and they were FF, that I would have any opinion on their choices- I absolutely did not care one way or another. I figured that we were all making parenting choices in a society where we almost expect judgement from others and they were maybe trying to get in there first to fend it off, which I totally understand.
However, once my baby was sitting up and starting finger foods, I noticed a real shift towards ‘when are you going to stop breastfeeding.’ I got people I didn’t even know too well telling me that it was downright weird to BF past six months and even sensed a really unpleasant undercurrent that people felt it was a bit deviant. A family member who is a staunch BF advocate for small babies (and I have heard making judgemental comments about FFing newborns/very small babies) actually told me that my son would grow up with a fetish if I BF him past six months or so. So, according to them, it was practically morally imperative to BF for six months, at which point it suddenly became disgusting and unacceptable. It was interesting (and really unpleasant) to hear the SAME person shaming both BFing and FFing, depending on whether it fitted their very narrow parameters of what was ok. So really, women can’t win.
Sorry, this is probably a garbled response, but essentially I feel like infant feeding is something that people feel like they are entitled to voice an opinion on when they wouldn’t comment on other private decisions that people make, and I think it’s rooted in misogyny. Even worse, far too many people seem to have wildly opposing views about what does and does not constitute an acceptable feeding routine, whether or not they have any actual experience of feeding an infant. Raising a baby in an environment where you feel like there’s always someone who is going to vehemently disagree with your feeding choices, and even voice it directly to you, is extremely stressful, and none of us can escape it, whether we FF or BF. So it’s hardly surprising that you get FFing and BFing mothers saying they get judged- I think both groups are reporting their experiences accurately and it wouldn’t hurt to look at the harm that society does to all mothers instead of arguing about it between ourselves.