"The case against breast-feeding"

I just posted on this topic at The Rhetorical Situation, including a link to an interview with Hanna Rosin, who wrote an article in this month's The Atlantic under this title, and Dr. Nancy Snyderman, which appeared on the Today Show. But I think it is worth reposting the link to the article and the interview, as I reach a somewhat different audience at Separation of Spheres.

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I choose my choice part 2

I'm still thinking about this idea, so this won't be the longer post I eventually hope to write. I do want to clarify a few things though.

First, I didn't mean to suggest that feminists are supposed to feel unfulfilled by motherhood (sorry, Jennie, if I did misread you). Rather what I meant was that there is a stereotype of women, who may or may not be feminists, who have given up their high-powered, high-paying careers to have children. These women are either obsessed with their children or unfulfilled by motherhood. I'm thinking of another SATC episode: "The Baby Shower" which is from the first season. In this episode the ladies attend a shower of a former friend who has left behind her high-paying job as a talent agent for a record company to marry and have a family. Aside for the main characters, all the women at the baby shower have children, and several of them have also left behind similar careers to have families. One woman in particular talks about how she used to manage something like 50 people in a Fortune-500 company (it's been a while since I've seen this episode, so forgive me if I'm getting the details wrong. The gist is correct.). She says "Now I just yell at the gardener," implying that she no longer has an outlet for her passion for work. She is represented as unfulfilled. At the other end of the spectrum there are the women who are completely obsessed by their children. There is one woman who says "I think my son is a god, and I tell him so every day." I think we, and by we I mean women and society at large, buy into these stereotypes a lot. Women are supposed to be either somewhat unfulfilled by motherhood or obsessed with their children. There is no in-between when clearly there is as most mothers I know are incredibly happy to be moms but also struggle to find time to do the things they like and want to do that have little to do with mothering.

Second, Amy Reads writes:

I think feminism gave us the right to choose to have a career outside of "The Home," or to "stay at home" with our children, or both, or neither. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't choose to be a stay-at-home mom, but that doesn't mean I have any less respect for the women who do choose to stay at home, Ph.D. or no. Feminism is All About Choice, and who am I to judge another woman's choices? She certainly should not be able to judge mine.

I agree with everything Ms. Reads has expressed, but unfortunately, we, as women and mothers, are judged for our choices. It is all well and good to say that feminism has provided us with choices and that we shouldn't judge one another for our choices. In an ideal world, that would be the way it is, but we do judge each other for our choices. The "Mommy Wars" wouldn't be a term we're all familiar with if we didn't judge one another. I'm really interested in the guilt (and I'm not sure this is the word I want to use, but it is the best one I can come up with right now) women (and, obviously, I don't mean all women) feel for choosing motherhood rather than a career, or a career rather than motherhood, or "trying to have it all." Why do we wonder whether we are sell-out feminists? Why do stay-at-home moms attack working moms and vice versa? Why can't Charlotte (or Jennie, or Supadiscomama, or Megs, or Ms. Reads, or I for that matter) just make a choice for herself, which is really what I want to believe feminism is about, without having to justify it?

Breastfeeding divide

Whenever I find an article like this one "Food or lewd? Breast-feeding opens divide," I always want to rail at the media. Would their really be a divide between breastfeeding moms and bottle-feeding moms if the media didn't report on or, dare I say it, create such divides? I've read a lot about the so-called "Mommy Wars" between working moms and stay-at-home moms, but I've often wondered if these "wars" would exist if some idiot at Newsweek didn't think it would make a great article to interview working moms and stay-at-home moms and ask them why and how they resent each other. Do mothers really have time to think about waging a war with other mothers? I don't mean to diminish the very real tensions that exist among mothers, but I do wonder if these tensions exist partly because the media continues to report on them.