"Put them away please Mum" - Sunday Times Ecosse section

[JanZ]

Unless you live in Scotland, you won't have had the pleasure of this article .

It had me apoplectic yesterday - with dh trying to tell me "chill out, just ignore it, you know articles/people like that aren't worth the energy". Didn't stop me reading out sections outragedly.

There are SO many different things I could say to refute her argumens, but I'll just say my vindictive closing thought, in response to her final paragraph: I HOPE, when she does have kids, and goes to try and express, that she is one of those that either can't express or has a baby that refuses the bottle. THEN see how much she enjoys being stuck permanently in the house because she doesn't want to "flaunt" breast feeding.

What absolute RUBBISH she talks. I know when I b/f (ds to a year), I always tried to do so discreetly - and once ds was attached, you'd have been hard pressed to see any skin (unless you were REALLY ogling) and ds just looked like he was having a snuggle. I have NEVER seen anyone "flaunting" it.

What I really don't understand is why she thinks that a womans breasts would be on show while she was bf? Granted I did have a mad cousin who insisted on fully exposing both of her breasts while feeling (simulaneously) but she was just plain odd!

I have never seen a woman flashing her breasts while feeding.

I only managed to feed my kids for a short time (sole breast milk to 3 months) because of supply problems. I am normaly the most uptight person imaginable....communal changing rooms are a nightmare to me, but I bf in public and no-one ever saw my lalas.

What a very, very odd woman.

the only person i wave my 'udders' at is dh to get his attention.

I may be wrong but hasn't this silly bitch done this kind of article before? I have seen people bf in restaurants, I find other people's table manners more off putting as not once, ever, have I seen anything other than baby's head! Plus, if it was me and anyone said anything I would ask why they were looking at my boobs in the first place?

In fact I get a little jealous I failed so miserably in bfing ds twins - lack of help in the hospital due to not enough staff if I am being honest, the midwives were great and supportive but had too much to do! Anyhoo, I like seeing it, natural as it is, not that you see people "whipping them out." FFS this woman is an idiot! What must she be like on holiday if women go topless? She should be ashamed of herself.

I'd rather breasts were allowed their true purpose than the boy's toys they are portrayed to be in this f'ed up country!

Actually, can you imagine if I had succeeded and she had witnessed me with one under each arm? She is the type that has "mother and baby" rooms, usually in the toilet - lovely!

So we have invented a breast pump and rubber teats have we? Well we've also invented nuclear weapons and most people don't think we should use those just because we've invented them.

Wow is that woman in for a shock, although actually I can't see her getting past day one if she has such an aversion to feeding in front of people, she isn't even going to let the midwives check her positioning.

My dearest DH read it before me and was outraged. Bless him!

I would imagine she says a lot of the things she says just to be contraversial but it's still a pretty sad article to be so offended by something completely natural.

I've been thinking about this and esp in relation to the poor rates of breastfeeding in Scotland. I think one of the reasons I didn't want to breastfeed dd1 (now 17) was that my only experience of breastfeeding up until then had been of being at my grandparents house in Glasgow, aged about 11 or 12 and my aunt having to go into another room to breastfeed her baby as though there was something 'shameful' about it. If I had read an article like this then, it would just have reinforced these feelings, wrong though they are, that breastfeeding should be hidden away. It negates all the good work done by things like the Scottish Health Education Board's advert to promote breastfeeding, which shows a mum in a cafe, chatting to her friend and breastfeeding her baby (discreetly, I may add) as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

That's a good point Tabitha - and one I will perhaps incorporate into my reposne ie that her article is irresponsible as she won't have put of the "miltant" mummies she has such a thing about (and that none of us have ever come across) as they'll go ahead and breast feed anyway (discreetly of course! ) - but that she may have put off those mothers lacking in confidence , who are just the ones that we should be ENCOURAGING to breast feed, instead of thinking that it is shameful and disgusting.

The article was on Page TWO of the ecosse section, not page three.

I'm definitely going to send a letter in - but I'll work hard to draft it so that it is positive and encouraging to those mums who are worried about attitudes to breast feeding, rather than (as I ouwld like to do reacting angrily to her stupid, ill-informed and childish attitudes.

JanZ - as a matter of interest, were there any pictures of women in low cut tops/bikinis etc in the supplement/rest of the paper - as you could possibly draw an interesting contrast between attitudes to bfing and to gratuitous nudity

Thanks for bringing this to attention - I'm more of an Observer girl on Sundays so had missed this and am now hopping. I am planning on writing but only once I can be polite! This wouldn't have stopped me feeding dss but is the kind of attitude that put a teenage cousin off bf.

Mummytosteven - good idea, I'll check out the rest of the paper. The Style section usually has a fair number of scantily clad females.

Hatmum - I get my "Observer" fix when I go out to my Mum and Dad's on a Sunday evening

My SILs didn't breast feed and didn't even consider it - I believe partly because they live in environments where it isn't common. For them (or those around them, as they're not planning on having any more!), breast feeding would be a jump into the unknown, so comments like this woman's would just re-inforce their fears.

I've always been very open about the fact that I breast fed for a year and hope that even my TALKING about it, those around me will see it as something "normal" and at least to be considered.

Send a link from this page to the editor?

stupid cow
thats all I can say and oh- thats shes letting all of woman kind down

I've never heard of this person. I don't think she's very successful. And I agree with Blu, I seriously think she needs therapy. And the paper does need to know that this sort of thing isn't just deeply offensive and gratuitously nasty, it's dangerous.

I've never heard of this person. I don't think she's very successful. And I agree with Blu, I seriously think she needs therapy. And the paper does need to know that this sort of thing isn't just deeply offensive and gratuitously nasty, it's dangerous.

I fell asleep last Wednsday night and never actually wrote the beautfully drafted letter that I had created in my head.

However, Other more organised people's responses are here .

I like the last blokes's comments. Forget about the "harm" of being "exposed" to breast feeding. What about passive smoking?!

FFS, what's the link between the nappy changing and the feeding?

If the ST Scotland wants drivel, I am perfectly happy to write it at really quite reasonable rates.

Like his question about how many people die of passive breast feeding! Quality!

Silly cow. Just have to say it again, for some reason.

BTW I breastfed my 13 month old at a wedding reception on Saturday evening. The one comment - from friend with no kids - was 'you're still breastfeeding? How lovely!'

MI, actually I have often seen slightly mad features about breastfeeding where it is compared to having a public bowel movement, which I truly thinks says a great deal about the mental state of the writer. It's eating you morons! Which you probably do in public as well. Doh!

And I do actually write quite a lot of drivel, but I have my limits, morally and ethically... (MI, you'd never write crap like this! You'd rather starve in the gutter)

I have to say I only ever got positive comments (if at all) about feeding in Scotland, and I fed until ds was over a year (although the last month was only morning and evening, so never out in public). Children's shoes dept in John Lewis, various restaurants in Glasgow, Braehead coffee shop, tea room in Dunoon.......

Maybe I was just immune to the daggers that women like this were sending to me!

But there again, I was never "exhibitionist" about it. It's disappointing when an educated (apparently) women like this makes such ill-informed and dangerous comments.

Oddly, the amount of this kind of hostile media drivel is out of all proportion to the number of people who actually object to real-life breastfeeding.

With baby no. 1 I was all geared up with clever ripostes in anticipation of lots of confrontation, as described in newspapers and mags. Three babies later, having bfed on every type of transport and public spaces from theatres to pubs, the number of times I've had to use my clever put-down has been: None. Because nobody has ever said anything, or even appeared to notice, apart from to give the baby benevolent smiles.

Either journalists inhabit a parallel universe to mine or they make these stories up.

The breastfeeding issue could be reflecting some insecurity she has about being childless, or being worried she might always be childless. The level of anger she's directing at public breastfeeders is incommensurate with the "crime" so to speak--so it sounds like an emotional as opposed to logical argument. . .and it's therefore all the easier to dismiss.

I can't agree with her basic argument, but I have to say that I CAN relate to:

(1) wanting a quiet meal out at a restuarant without children ONCE IN A WHILE. I mean, don't any of you wish for that sometimes? Whether the child is breastfed or not has nothing to do with it.
(2) her dislike of the smugness that compells some mothers to do whatever the hell they please: mums who run over your feet with a buggy and don't even say sorry; mothers/fathers who stand by proudly while their infants "talk" through a lecture or movie or wedding ceremony. I gather that this lack of consideration has grouped all mothers/babies in the category of "invasive." So breastfeeding, an otherwise innocent bystander, has come to be reviled as much as the other stuff and necessity has come to be confused with smugness.

That's my theory, anyway.

I am going off to find a brick to whack her with.