Here we go again: one opinionated father trying to bring perspective to the business of mothers.  Today’s trespass against minding-my-own business involves a second foray into the subject of breast feeding. This time out we’re thoughtfully assaying the “debate” over tots milking their moms in public. Why is there a debate over this? Because anything with a possible division of opinion is viciously debatable these days.  At 235 years old, America is a highly debatey place, passing from middle-age into a cranky, addled and argumentative elderliness. Matter of fact, “debate” might as well be scribbled over in the dictionary since it no longer has any practical meaning. In our swell society of seething, polarized ideologies debate is probably best replaced in usage by combat because that’s what you can expect if somebody catches you expressing an opinion they don’t share…What? You don’t see how Barack Hussein Obama is exactly like Adolf Hitler? You must be one of them stupid moron Nazis too…Respect for alternative ideas has become highly endangered, verging on extinction, around here. It would be awfully nice if we all could break free of our hairy bubbles of belief and start considering the viewpoints and feelings of others again.

   Taking a look a public breast feeding is a good place to start for today. Boy howdy, don’t it just get some people all hot under the collar?  Actually, the issues really just piss off the mothers who engage in publicly nursing their offspring. They get frightfully miffed at the many others who find it mildly distasteful, or just not so groovy, and contemptuous of those who don’t care one way or the other. Some moms get so carried away in the Miracle of Life hype that they forget their motherhood ain’t all that unique and cannot fathom why not everyone is onboard with how they go about their mothering. Though it seems difficult for nursing moms to grasp why, the reason for most people’s antipathy towards public dairy production are simple: they just weren’t raised in ways which would make it easy to accept.  In generations prior to mine, women breast fed openly in the home because they had to.  Infant formula wasn’t as wide-spread an option or was an unnecessary expense. Immediate family members all got to witness it but mom wouldn’t be caught dead lacto-feeding on a bus. By my generation, formula was in full fashion but even for those moms who breast fed, decorum still ruled for many and nary a knob was seen by us as children. That pervasive sense of modesty got into us young and it stuck on into adulthood. Seeing any naked tit in public can kick off a sense of discomfort or embarrassment within men and women alike. Generally, we weren’t brought up to readily enjoy children gnawing out a breast-snack in the middle of a dinner party either.

   Another aspect to this is people’s sense of manners and what is socially acceptable.  If your parents instilled a set of table manners into you then you might not dig the sight of any child chewing with his mouth open, making noise as it eats or dribbling food in a restaurant.  That is not to say a nursing baby is the same as an ill-mannered brat and a nursing mom is equivalent to some trollop flashing a nipple in the park.  Psychologically, however,  it can be difficult for us to quickly differentiate, or at all, from the revulsion/uneasiness at noisy eating and undressed breasts to gracefully embrace it when the two are suddenly united as some beatific, Circle of Life thing right in our faces.  Of course it’s okay for any woman to breastfeed their child in public but she needs to accept that not many people are going to be overjoyed to see it go down. She needs to always bear in mind that she’s probably cast more than a few disapproving glances at the behavior of strangers out there. We’re all entitled to the public spaces but we are not required to share the ideas of everyone in them.  A woman who tosses a shawl over herself while nursing displays a fine sense of concern not just for the nutrition of her kid but for the comfort of the people around her.

   There is also this: Bottles or breasts, babies getting fed are a sloppy spectacle regardless of the delivery method. And you just gotta face it: tired and overweight, most moms are not at their loveliest for a while after giving birth. There’s a lot of visual thorns to get past before people can embrace the natural magnificence of slobbering children ingesting the fluid of life from their haggard mommies. If, post-partum, you still manage to look to look like Megan Fox then men might line up to exult in the glory of breast feeding.  But every regular mother, even one who publicly nurses, will give you and your suckling pup a hateful, hairy eyeball whenever you whip out that air-brushed B-cup over decaf lattes at Starbucks.