It's utter rubbish that children are sexual from the age of 3 onwards, if by sexual we mean that they actually realise what the ?sex? act means or what it actually entails.
Yes, toddlers realise that their genitals give them good sensations. Feeding at their mother?s breast give them great sensations without it being sexual. Talking about sexualisation and BF simultaneously tells me nothing other than most humans are still ignorant of their own bodies and lack real understanding of BF whether in terms of biology or human social behaviour.
My DS was breastfed until he self-weaned at age 3.5 years old. Yes, he is just ONE child out of many millions, but my extensive research into BF tells me that Bf children are in fact LESS sexual. My son is now nearly 8 and still sees me topless quiet often. He doesn?t even look at my breasts, they mean absolutely nothing to him other than they were used to feed him!
Only a few months ago I noticed 2 boys in his class ( 7 o 8) sniggering at the poster of a woman exposing a bit cleavage. My son's instant response was "Mum. why are they laughing at that picture?" i.e. at nearly age 8, my son still does NOT find women's breasts as objects to be sniggered at nor has he yet latched on (excuse the pun !!) to the idea that breasts are for anything other than feeding animal or human babies/children.
Of course the influence of parents comes into it as well, both of the sniggering boys mentioned above have fathers who are from male-chauvinist, football mad, boob-mad backgrounds. My son dose not have the same sort of male influences, DH not being chauvinistic and other male members of the family (chauvinist or not) not being allowed to influence him.
A man once asked me the idiotic question ?are you still breastfeeding because it turns you on sexually" ? An elderly lady (childless) told me that I was setting my son up for ?a life-time boob obsession? with all my BF. Leaving the stupidity and sheer rudeness of these comments to one side, these sorts of questions expose the extent to which both men and women (parents or not) are utterly ill-informed and ignorant about BF.
It is no wonder whatsoever that the children of such people also grow up to see extended BF (I hate the word ?extended - it isn?t extended at all as the average age of self-weaning globally is 4 years old ? my son and I are totally NORMAL ) as both sexual and repulsive.
Research shows that primates BF their babies to the human equivalent of 7 years old. If humans did not have socialisation, ill-informed gossip and ridiculous amounts of sexualisation to worry about (promoted by the media more than anything else) we would all probably do what our biology dictates: - BREAST feed our children well beyond the baby years because it?s physically and emotionally the best thing to do for both mother and child.
Primates and other ?higher? order animals don?t have to worry about who thinks what of exposed boobs. They feed their babies/toddlers because if they don?t they will die of various diseases. It?s to do with the survival instinct and nothing else. They also don't worry about ATTACHMENT parenting nor read books on the topic, they just DO IT otherwise their babies die.
My son has been educated to understand that the best food for a baby is breast milk. It is only by educating our sons and daughters that we can finally stop worrying about BF and ignore all the crap written about it in the media.