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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Tom and Nicole and Colin and Kathryn
"Eyes Wide Shut" provokes literary couple Colin and Kathryn Harrison to spar over marriage, passion, jealousy and the lure of dangerous sex in a vanilla world.
By Colin Harrison and Kathryn Harrison
[07/23/99]

Column
Y'all take care now
30,000 feet above Jackson, Miss., I came to believe it was time to start a novel.
By Anne Lamott
[07/22/99]

Gen X's change of head
To the women who came of age in the '60s, oral sex was an act of great intimacy. To their daughters, it's about as intimate as shaking hands.
By Shari Thurer
[07/21/99]

The modesty debate
Wendy Shalit: Stop pressuring young women to have sex!
Leora Tanenbaum: Every girl is a potential "slut."
By Lori Leibovich
[07/21/99]

Formula for disaster
Why do many doctors take a neutral or even pro-formula stance with their patients--despite evidence of the serious potential hazards of bottle-feeding?
By Katie Allison Granju
[07/20/99]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

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People began their survey of the gallery with me -- a live action Mary Cassatt. There was plenty of competition for visual information from my friend's paintings and drawings. Still, it was more than interest in art that made the strangers race past me like I was a bum with a can in my hands. The only people who didn't avert their gaze and make their feet follow them were a bunch of kids, drawn to someone close to their size.

A girl who looked 5 years old asked if the baby was nursing from me. I said yes, and Franny pulled his head away, distracted. The girl was stroking Franny's head by now and she put her finger near his mouth and we joked about him nursing from her finger.

"Is it embarrassing for you to pull up your shirt so he can have a drink?" she asked, pulling up her shirt and touching her nipple.

"No," I said.

"Not even a little bit embarrassing?" she pressed.

"Well, I guess at first it was, but I've been doing this for nine months now, so it isn't so strange."

Also Today The lactating feminist I'm not a porn star. I'm not burning my bra. I'm just feeding my baby in public.

I was floored. It took nine months and a 5-year-old to say what's been on my mind. Of course it is embarrassing to breast-feed, especially as my baby gets older and people expect him to be less of a baby, though he is still completely dependent on me and my husband. He has two stubby teeth in the bottom of his mouth and he just began to crawl, but his overalls and T-shirts resemble our adult clothes and I can feel people expecting his behavior to resemble ours, too.

The average person in my path would be more comfortable if Franny were eating from a plate than from me. I noticed my aunt and uncle giving each other the eye when I fed Franny at their dinner table. I don't blame anyone for their discomfort. Until I entered this relationship with my child, I felt awkward seeing a bare breast in public, too.

Breast-feeding, like all parenting styles, has had its days in the sun and shade. In 1910, a sadistic-looking anti-embarrassment device was patented to allow women to be discreet about nursing. Early in my mothering, I felt a yen for a similar kind of tool. I wanted distance between me and my newborn, who was nursing constantly. Franny is a big boy who quickly perfected the art of simultaneous sleeping and eating. Several times a day and night he would latch on and stay for at least an hour, usually two. When I experimented with a breast pump, it felt strange to put a machine to my body, but it was also a relief. I had never had someone next to me and needing me so often. I am not a modest person but I was tired of constantly revealing my breasts. For a second I considered pumping all of my milk and feeding it to Franny in bottles. I felt ashamed of such selfishness, but it made me realize just how peculiar I found my new circumstances.

Next page | Breast-feeding initiation is like sexual initiation