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Mother appears on British TV to explain why she breastfeeds her nine-year-old daughter
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What do you give a nine-year old for a birthday present? A bike? A doll? Well, Veronika Robinson of Penrith in the U.K. chose to give her daughter breastmilk as a ninth birthday present. From the source.
Robinson apparently weaned her oldest daughter when she was five years old, but when she turned nine she asked for breastmilk again, and got it (Robinson was still breastfeeding her other daughter). The younger daughter Elizah is now almost eight and does not want to stop drinking milk from her mother's breast. "I don't want to be weaned. I want to breastfeed for ever," Elizah says.
Robinson recently went on the Britain's Channel 4 to speak about her decision to defy convention and extend breastfeeding with her daughters to such an advanced age. Not surprisingly, Robinson is an extreme lactivist who edits an alternative-parenting magazine called The Mother. "My girls were brought up to think it was completely normal to ask for a breast in a shop," she said on the program. "That's bad enough when they are toddlers, but when they are big girls, people get freaked out by it. I try to be discreet, but we have had some odd looks. People tend to be disgusted and disbelieving."
Ya think? How can you discretely breastfeed an eight year old in public?
I know the lactivist community gets very upset about any scorn brought down on extended breastfeeders, but it seems like any reasonable lactivist would recognize the line must be drawn somewhere. As someone who is adamant about the right to breastfeed, it concerns me that people like Robinson actually discredit the normalization and widespread acceptance of breastfeeding by turning it into a freakshow. When a woman says things like, "I can't believe any mother wouldn't love to hold onto that wonderful feeling you get when you are nursing your own child," and her daughter got the idea from somewhere (Gee, I wonder where) that breastfeeding is so great she wants to do it "forever," it is pretty clear that there are other issues at work here. Honestly, I don't really care that she has chosen to do this (there are a million things more harmful to kids that parents do all the time) but does she really need to go shouting from the rooftops about it? With breastfeeding in general still trying to overcome a certain ick-factor among ignorant jerks, stories like this don't help.
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ReaderComments (Page 3 of 3)
3-23-2007 @ 9:29PM
colleen said...What if one of the little girls friends saw her out in public getting breastfed from her mom? Talk about being tormented from her friends!! It's weird.
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12-21-2007 @ 10:42AM
alissa said...I have no problem with extended breast feeding. I breast fed my son until he was over a year and a half. I had to help him wean. He wouldn't do it on his own. I had all kinds of people asking me when I was going to wean him. It really is a personal matter. I didn't appreciate the comments.
Lactation Consultants refer to breast milk as "liquid gold", that is how mothers feel towards it. It is something they had to work to produce, and the start of breast feeding isn't always easy.
I feel that a child should be broken of the pacifier, bottle and breast around the age of five. Past then, a mom is infringing on their social skills. Instead of learning to cope with their problems, they are using a sucking device to sooth them. Their friends in school have a problem with it as well.
It just so happens that we don't live in a society that accepts public breast feeding. I think that if someone wants to breast feed their child, they should go somewhere discrete to do it. They should do it to feel more comfortable and to spare other people from the awkwardness they experience. If anything, put a blanket over the two of you. With that said, there is a time when a child does need to learn to hold out until it's time to go in a private place. For me, my son was close to 1 yr. old when he learned that. Sometimes I'd sneak into a dressing room to let his breast feed, but it still was private.
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