Posted on 05/11/2012 11:54:39 AM PDT by servo1969
Jamie Lynn Grumet, the 26-year-old mother featured on the cover of Time magazine breastfeeding her 3-year-old son, has done more this week than become the poster woman for “attachment parenting,” the sometimes laudable movement that advises parents to be physically and emotionally available and responsive to their children. She has shown the limits of such a concept, and the ways in which it can be twisted into a bizarre, contemptible caricature of itself.
Grumet is a model, and models have to have at least healthy dose of narcissism (television journalists like me, too, by the way). But I fear Grumet has more than what’s healthy.
Because she thought nothing of becoming far more famous than she ever was or ever would have been by getting naked on the cover of Time using her son as a prop—letting him, in fact, look right into the camera and be completely recognizable while sucking her nipple. He may never be better-known for anything than for being a breastfeeding 3-year-old on the cover of a national magazine.
Ever.
When he enters school later in his young life he may be ridiculed for it. And these realities hint at a woman who could (and I have not evaluated her) have very poor boundaries and be willing or likely not only to nurture a child, but to absorb him, deny him his personhood and render him no more than her appendage.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
See, Grumet loves being photographed. And she apparently loves having her son breastfeed. And she loves attention. And she’s happy enough to get naked in front of other people (which there may be nothing wrong with—for her). But that may or may not be the case for her 3-year-old boy, which seems not to have mattered to her—at all. And if his will was bent to hers in order to have him suck his mother’s nipple in front of a photographer and makeup artist and art director and all of America, then it stands to reason that his will may be being bent to hers in all sorts of ways—including protracted breastfeeding.
The truth is that what Time magazine may have unwittingly captured and been party to was a grotesque form of psychological abuse—the parading into public of an intimate moment (intimate for mother and child) at the sole direction of that child’s mother, who didn’t stop to think that her child may not be able at the age of three to know what he thinks about the whole thing, much less to stop it, if he wanted to.
Grumet has stained the attachment parenting movement by documenting how easily it can go wrong, when used as an excuse for poor boundaries and manipulation.
In a way, while looking at the Time magazine cover, we are all Grumet’s son and may know something of his possible plight: finding her a compelling and dramatic presence, seduced by her combination of sex appeal and motherhood—unable, in fact, to detach from her.
Talk about a prescription for psychological disaster.
This is self-centeredness at its worst, sold as good parenting. And this is an act of media violence against a child, committed by adult journalists who also commandeered his will (as did his mother), for sensation and profit. Rarely do we get such evidence of how wrong parenting can go, how poorly journalists can behave and how slow we can be to recognize ugliness when it is disguised as something beautiful.
Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com.
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I think maybe you could breastfeed a little extra, say to 18 months or so, if your child has a weakened immune system like in a preemie. But basically if your kid has teeth and can walk it's time to lose the nipple.
Seems like some kind of protracted infancy to me.
And appearently (info from an interview I read) her mom breastfed her till she was six so nutty-ness runs in the family.
I dunno. When I saw the cover, I asked the same question that I know is on everyone’s mind.
It has to do with Laz.
Attachment parenting seems to be another way to limit family size...
In all seriousness, the first thing I thought of when I saw that picture was, “That kid is going to have to live with that the rest of his life.”
I think a lot of us did.
Breasts work as long as you make them work!
You just know that kid will have the cover plasted on his locker and never live it down. That’s one sick, sick, sick mama.
He MAY be ridiculed? This poor kid will never live this down for the rest of his life.
Imagine this kid's life on the playground. What in the hell was his mother thinking? He’ll always be known as “the kid with the tit in the mouth.” For decades, people will wonder “where is he now” and give him unwanted attention.
This woman must be a sick bastardess to do this to her kid. And where in the hell was the little guy’s father to stop this insanity? I understand that he wouldn't even come out on a talk show this sickee was on this morning. And that the kid was acting like a brat.
She absolutely should be ashamed of herself!
They should have used me instead of the kid.
No, it’s a way to build your own self-esteem through the child.
When I was young and raising my first child, we lived in a resort town with a beach. One day a few women with preschool age kids went to the beach and let the kids run around and play while we socialized . The one woman was president of the local La Leche League. About every 20 minutes her kid, who was between 2 and 3 would run up to her, pull down her bathing suit and stand there sucking away.
I never went to the beach with the woman again.
what happens when this kid asks his friends over for lunch LOL
You have to ask yourself who the real weirdos are.
I personally feel the whole thing is rather perverted.
It is the public nature not breast feeding till three. It is only uncommon in western cultures that it has become an issue.
We may be the weirdos, but then again, we don't live in a third-world country.......yet.
“Breasts work as long as you make them work!”
Yeah? Just try to get them to mow the yard.
So, in the 3rd-world context, breast feeding to the age of 5 makes sense. In the context of the rest of the world, though, it doesn’t. Breasts are sex objects. You favor public breast-feeding? Breastfeeding at work? I am asking myself who’s the weirdo.
The general rule is... if the kid can ask for it... it’s time to stop breastfeeding.
The first thought that occurred to me is that she is doing this more as a form of weight-loss for her modeling career than for the boy’s well-being.
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