Tuesday, January 30, 2007
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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I wholeheartedly agree.
"Do mothers really have time to think about waging a war with other mothers?"
in my experience, yes. I have been treated like absolute crap by SAHM's, at my daughter's school, at the park, even among friends. And I don't even work full-time.
Good post! It's always important to me to remember that the idea of pitting women against each other is a long-standing one, and this is just another version of the good mom/bad mom dichotomy (which I'm sooooo tired of). I mean, really, this is simply one more way for our culture to invent "catfights" among women, and unfortunately, some women get so caught up in defending their own choices, they don't realize they've slipped into attacking the choices of another mother. After all, at heart, every mom usually believes that the decisions she's making for her child are the right ones. Sometimes it's harder to recognize that nasty monster - passing judgment - when considering the decisions another mother makes for her child.
I'm a big believer in coalition-building based on shared goals, and most moms I know all share the same goal - raising healthy, happy children. This is what should get the headlines.
You're totally right. I think part of the problem is that parenting choices are so so so important to us and we all want very badly to believe that we are making the right choices. If I make a choice for my child and someone else makes the opposite choice for her child, then that implies my choice is wrong. Of course, that implication is not necessarily there, but sometimes it is and sometimes we put it there when it's not and sometimes it's more than an implication. People are extremely defensive of parenting choices because they are very important choices, and it can be hard to remember that different families can make different choices and still all be right.
Post a Comment