Deconstruction: Won't Someone Think Of The Children!? and the Seductive Allure of Mom-Shaming

(Trigger Warning: Children, Pregnancy, Breast Feeding, Child Abuse)

I wanted to start this post saying that I think "trusting women" to be a basic and fundamental point of feminism, but I suppose that in the interests of pedantry, this isn't strictly true. If we define feminism as believing in, supporting, looking fondly on, hoping for, and/or working towards the equality of the sexes -- and I think there are good arguments in support of that definition -- then I suppose in the interests of fairness, it's possible to be a 'feminist' and feel that all peoples, regardless of sex or gender, have inferior judgment to one's own. But I'm assuming, if you're on this blog, that you're probably not starting from that position. Still, in the interests of pedantry, I'll make the following 'me' statement:

For me, "trusting women" is a basic and fundamental point of my feminism.

I'm not the only one; the NARAL Blog For Choice 2010 theme was one of trusting women: trusting women to make choices that are good and logical and wise for their situations, trusting women to know best what their own needs are, and trusting women to not be the hysterical, straw-people they are so frequently portrayed as in the media.

Fertile Feminism writes:

To me, trusting women is the crux of the abortion issue and all of women’s reproductive rights, really. Because if we can’t trust women to make their own decisions about their own bodies and lives, what in the world is the government and our society doing even pretending that they consider women fully sentient human beings who should be afforded the same rights as men?

[...] Trusting women to make the best choices for themselves, their health and their families extends not only to abortion, though, but to all aspects of their reproductive processes. [...] Trusting women means trusting them to know whether they’d like to or are able to become mothers, and when, and how many times. It means keeping public scrutiny and laws and judgment off their pregnant bodies. It means providing them with the tools, knowledge and support to make their own decisions in childbirth and allowing their instincts to flourish and guide them, with confidence. It means accepting that sometimes people will make choices that we wouldn’t make ourselves and trusting that they were the right ones for them at that time.(Emphasis mine.)

And I couldn't agree more.

Now, "trusting women" doesn't mean that we take a leave of absence from our senses. "Trusting women" doesn't mean that we automatically believe everything said to us by a woman. "Trusting women" doesn't mean we live in Strawman Land where it just takes one woman to say the sky is green, the grass is red, and she is God in order to throw us all into a tumult of confusion. That's not what "trusting women" means.

No, what "trusting women" means is that I extend trust and respect to other women and I start from a position of assuming them to be logical, rational, good people. What "trusting women" means is that while I may not always agree with the choices other women make about their lives and their families and their careers and their spouses, I trust that they know more about their lives and their families and their careers and their spouses than I do. And that gap between their knowledge and mine, when combined with the aforementioned trust in their logic and rationality and goodness, means that their personal choices are not my business to question and probe and condemn.

But here's the thing. We live in a society that loves to question and probe and condemn women. We, each and every one of us, have been raised from childhood to question and probe and condemn women. And that training to question and probe and condemn women can be so hard to root out. We understand, for example, as a feminist group that "trusting women when it comes to their sex lives" is a good thing and that "trusting women when it comes to their pregnancies" is a good thing, but we still sometimes struggle with "trusting women when it comes to raising the product of their pregnancy". We've moved proudly past slut-shaming and yet too often trip and fall into mom-shaming.

Mom-shaming is so easy to do, if only because most of us are genuinely decent people who care about children. And that's a good thing -- I'm glad that most of us are genuinely decent people who care about children. But a problem arises when we question and probe and condemn women's choices under the guise of righteous anger and social justice, and we do feminism in general and women in specific a very severe injustice when we forget that choices not like our own are not automatically child abuse.

"Child abuse" is a slippery term. Wikipedia defines "child abuse" as "the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child," and while the pedants among us could point out that that particular definition is rather vague and could encompass a variety of benign behaviors, most of us would probably argue that people know child abuse when they see it. I mean, reasonable people can be reasonable, right?

Maybe not. Probably a fair few of you are familiar with Richard Dawkins' sensational claim that teaching children religion is a form of child abuse, and a form of abuse potentially more harmful than systematic sexual assault. But it's not like Dawkins has a great track record on feminism anyway, so maybe it's too much to expect that he would trust people in general to love their children and to make choices that they believe will provide their children the greatest benefit in the long run and perhaps to recognize that he doesn't have all the answers and that parents should perhaps be verbally attacked less and supported in an open dialogue more.

So I don't expect Richard Dawkins to be perfect, or even to use the word "abuse" in a responsible manner that doesn't dangerously cheapen it into meaningless rhetoric. But it was with the greatest sadness that a few days ago I caught up on posts at Feministe and saw this thread on nursing-past-infancy. (Trigger Warning: Extensive mom-shaming in the comments.)

Nursing-past-infancy, for those not up on the lingo, is the process of breastfeeding a child for the first several years of life, usually continuing until the child chooses to wean itself. Nursing-past-infancy is actually (NSFW Warning: includes a breastfeeding picture) recommended by quite a few health organizations when mutually desired by mother and child. And let's real quick back up and re-read that sentence: mutually desired by mother and child. If the mother can't or doesn't want to nurse, she shouldn't. If the child can't or doesn't want to nurse, then it won't. This isn't about strapping all women down and forcing them to become automated milking machines, this is about choice.

But if a woman chooses to nurse her child until the child is 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever and if the child chooses to nurse until it is 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever, then (a) in most general cases, that's a pretty healthy situation and it gets a cheerful thumbs up from your Friendly Neighborhood Nutritionist and (b) in most general cases, it's a personal parenting decision that is undertaken with a great deal of careful thought and with a great deal of invested interest in the welfare of the mother and child involved. I, as a feminist, trust that the woman involved is a smart, logical woman who is able to weigh her needs and her situation, and those of her loved child, and make intelligent decisions for her unique situation.

And yet, you have already seen for yourself (or guessed from my trigger warning) that this was not the general reaction on the Feministe board to the idea, the very thought, that some selfish mother might be insisting on breastfeeding her 5-year-old child. Indeed, it wasn't but a few comments in before at least one member recommended calling Child Protective Services and forcibly removing such a child from its home, because any mother who refuses to wean her child before its fifth birthday is probably a hardened child abuser.

Or -- oops! -- feminism! Any first-world dwelling mother who refuses to wean her child before its fifth birthday. Because obviously you can't judge all those mothers in third-world countries. They've got, like, a different culture or poverty or something. (Because you can be a card-carrying feminist and think that women who breastfeed differently from you are child abusers who shouldn't be allowed near children, but god forbid you be a racist or an elitist.)

What was interesting and fascinating and extremely distressing for me were the reasons why nursing-past-infancy was cited as child abuse. No one was able to provide any factual evidence that nursing-past-infancy hurts children, and indeed quite a bit of evidence was provided on the contrary: that when deemed by mother and child to be mutually beneficial, nursing-past-infancy can have a great deal of health benefits. But despite being unable to come up with evidence of harm, the detractors still labeled the practice as 'child abuse' because it is obviously:

• "Creepy"
• "Inappropriate"
• "Hinders independence [in the child]"
• "The child’s maturation could be slowed"
• "[Discourages the child] to develop abilities outside of the mother’s circle of care"
• "Builds a cycle of dependency"
• "[Suggests] boundary issues [on the part of the mother]"

And at least a dozen comments noted that, okay, sure, breasts don't have to be sexual, but they clearly are in our society, so women need to shape up and realize that and keep children away from their breasts because otherwise the children will realize they were fed by a socially-designated-as-such sexual organ, and they'll be damaged for life. Or they might grow up to think breasts aren't solely for sex, which would of course make them weird outcasts of society, because goodness knows that's the first thing I ask anyone when I meet them for the first time.

Ana: Nice to meet you, Bob. Do you think breasts are solely for sex?

Bob: Well, despite being raised in America, no, I don't. Primarily because my mother breastfed me.

Ana: Alas, I'm afraid we can't be friends then.

If I had a nickel for every time that happened.

What was particularly sad to me was the number of commenters who had clearly put no thought into the issue beyond oh my god, icky. There were "guidelines" suggested of "well, not once the child can ask for milk", which sort of blew my mind because a child asks for milk from Day 1. A newborn baby will suck on whatever comes near its mouth and will screech until milk comes out of something. At a few months of age, a baby can start tugging on shirts and waving and pointing and gesturing. Before the first-year mark, most babies are using meaningful babbles to get what they want; babies who learn sign language are often able to communicate their desires 'linguistically' well before that. The point here is that babies are very, very good at expressing desires and saying "once it's old enough to ask" doesn't really make a lot of non-arbitrary sense.

Other guidelines were things like "well, not once the child can get nutrition elsewhere", which technically argues in favor of no breastfeeding, ever. I mean, babies can "get nutrition" from Day 1 without a breast. We can argue over how comparable the nutrition is or isn't, but the person suggesting the guideline wasn't, because then it wouldn't have been a good guideline in terms of the oh my god, icky. Indeed, discussing breastfeeding from a nutrition angle might force the discussion to acknowledge the varieties of individual needs and experiences and once you've allowed for the variety of the human experience, you have to fall back on trusting the person who knows the most about their individual situation, and suddenly you can't call a woman abusive just because she breastfed her child for a different length of time than you would for yours because maybe there were special nutritional needs to consider. And where would be the fun in that?

One comment in particular by "tmc" highlighted this problem:

All of the things that people are saying about breastfeeding 5-year-olds – that it’s unnecessary, needs to be hidden, shows a weakness or neediness on the mom’s part, etc – are things that people said to me when I was nursing a newborn. ALL of these things. So since I’m damned if I nurse a toddler and damned if I nurse a baby…well, fuck it. Me and my little one will just do what works for us and to hell with anyone who has a problem with it.(Emphasis mine.)

I've been a feminist for going on a long time now, and I've been on more than a few boards. I've been on boards where the community understood that it was Not Cool to call a woman mentally ill for having 'too many' lovers. I've been on boards where the community understood that it was Not Cool to call a woman a liar and a fraud for saying that she'd been raped. I've been on boards where the community understood that it is Not Cool to call a woman an emotional abuser for raising her child to be included in her Catholic community church.

And yet it's apparently a rare and special thing to find a board where the community understands that it is Not Cool to call a woman a physical abuser for nursing her child 'too long', where 'too long' is pretended to be defined not by the arbitrary biases and prejudices of the community, but rather by the emotionless, logical robots who infest the board and are free of all consideration except their burning, righteous fury on behalf of suffering children everywhere who might be nursed a few months longer than the average in the first-world country du jour and thereby damaged for life.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic. Maybe it's a good thing that we live in a society that takes child abuse so seriously and which is willing to rigorously defend the rights children everywhere. Maybe I should be relieved that we're seeing a cultural shift such that parents are encouraged to raise their children healthily, and where an open dialogue can be found almost anywhere on how to best accomplish that.

And yet... a part of me doesn't see an open, healthy dialogue in defense of children. A part of me just sees the eager questioning, gleeful probing, and heady condemnation of women for their choices. A part of me just sees an unwillingness to trust women to make the best decisions for their lives and their families and their careers and their spouses, and instead take every opportunity to use our own biases and our own prejudices to hurt women for being women. A part of me recognizes that for every "breastfeeding too long is child abuse" proponent, there's an equal-and-opposite "breastfeeding not long enough is child abuse" accuser waiting in the wings.

A part of me recognizes that women, no matter what they do, can't win. Breastfeed or bottle-feed; homeschool or public school; work or stay home; cook from scratch or order out; own a television or not; it doesn't matter. No matter what choice a woman makes, she's still going to be demonized for every choice she makes. Not because the detractors tearing them down hate women, of course, but because they love children.

And who could ever disagree with loving children?

--Ana Mardoll

---

 

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Comments

[chris the cynic]

In a class on human growth and development a teacher asked what was the average age of stopping breastfeeding. (Pretty sure that "stopping" implies we're only talking about people who started, for whatever that's worth.) Student in front of me mumbled "8 years" as a joke, the teacher heard him, asked him to repeat his answer, he revised to "Eight months," teacher was disappointed, but moved on and said the the correct answer was seven years.

I never found out where she got that statistic, so I don't know if it's accurate (from the article it seems like seven years would ideally be around the top end of the normal range rather than average), but I do remember that it shocked everyone in the room. I don't think the reaction was an assumption that that constituted child abuse though. That's just... I don't even, I mean ... um.

Breastfeeding is child abuse why now? Pretty sure I don't understand so much as a single step in that reasoning.

-

All of which sort of ignores the issue that breastfeeding is the example rather than the topic. You're right, it does seem impossible to win.

[Brin]

All of which sort of ignores the issue that breastfeeding is the example rather than the topic.

For me it's a distracting example, since I was nursed past infancy. The only reason I stopped at four was because my newborn brother needed the milk far more than I did. Brother, having no little siblings to stop him, was six.
I think I've managed to dig past that and reach the point, but it was a bit tricky.

[Bay]

While we're distracted by boobs: is it normal to be afraid of nursing? I'm not nearly as apprehensive about it as childbirth, which scares the shit out of me primarily because I don't handle pain well, but I'm getting to the age where I'm thinking about babies and yet...

[MaryKaye]

The key point made by the boobs, I think: What is the right way to raise a child? *It depends.* The World Health Organization recognized this recently by offering different guidelines for breastfeeding duration depending on the mother's HIV status and related issues. Breast milk is good for babies; HIV is not; the right decision depends on the individual factors (what meds are available, etc) as well as on the parents' judgment about relative risks.

One-size-fits-all advice is EVIL. This became really evident to me when I adopted my son. Some parenting strategies which may work very well in general do not work for children with attachment disorder. A lot of parenting books, for example, assume that a child will not starve himself. As the parent of someone who gained less than two pounds between 2nd and 3rd grade (before I met him--he says he lived on chips for a year because he didn't want to eat) I know this doesn't apply. It's possible though sometimes difficult to ignore bad advice in books, but gods deliver us from bad advice from people in a position to harm us if we don't take it, like social workers.

It's also true that something about breastfeeding brings out the worst in many advice givers. Rivka on LiveJournal has a really painful set of posts on being assailed by breastfeeding zealots when she could not breastfeed her first child. When her second was born it became apparent that her "failure" was nothing to do with her but was specific to that first child. People literally wanted her to endanger her first child's life by continuing to breastfeed after there was clear evidence of failure to thrive. It was infuriating.

[cjmr]

Bay, yes. Especially if you don't have a lot of experience with positive nursing role-models.

[Deird, who gets weirded out when her internets collide]

Thanks, Ana. I've been following that Feministe thread, and getting all annoyed at it. (In fact, I commented a couple of times...) It's nice to see someone very clearly express the main problem with it.

[Mmy]

@Deird: yeah, I was following that thread as well and feeling the need to bang my head against the nearest hard object. I thought Ana pulled together a lot of my thoughts--only she said things better than I could.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Meanwhile, I'm being distracted by the inaccurate references to Richard Dawkins, because I don't think he's entirely wrong, though I do think he overgeneralises from his examples. He's wrong. A religious upbringing is not child abuse. But it can be.

TRiG.

[Mmy]

@TRiG: Are you arguing that Dawkins didn't say the things he has been quoted saying?

I for one quit giving him even the smallest "well maybe it was just badly put" after his elevator-gate performance.

[AnaMardoll]

A religious upbringing is not child abuse. But it can be.

I actually completely agree with this, but in the sense that ANYTHING can be abusive if done 'right'. And by 'right' I mean 'abusively'. Which is sort of tautological. o.O

One-size-fits-all advice is EVIL.

THIS.

Thanks, Ana. I've been following that Feministe thread...

I felt so very bad calling it out -- I mean, I'm talking about the comments, but still, it seemed like bad internet form. But it was a really good diving board for feminism fail and how incredibly easy it is to do. And I'm just as guilty at times. *tries harder*

[AnaMardoll]

I actually completely agree with this, but in the sense that ANYTHING can be abusive if done 'right'. And by 'right' I mean 'abusively'. Which is sort of tautological. o.O

However, I should add that I don't think this is what Dawkins meant. I certainly don't believe it's what he said. I do believe that he likes to say sensational things to get attention for his cause. (See also Elevator Gate where I'm pretty sure no one was on tenterhooks wondering what HE thought, but he decided to insert himself in the most sensational way possible.) That's just my opinion though.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Oh, yes. "Elevatorgate" (good grief I hate that word: if it must be a -gate it should be liftgate, as it happened in Dublin), definitely put me off Dawkins. He's an excellent science writer, but I won't look to him for social commentary. The fact is, though, that he presented a case, a real life case, where religious abuse was worse than sexual abuse. So it can, sometimes, be true. To generalise from that to say that religion in general is abusive is, I think, (a) not warranted by the evidence, and (b) rude. So what he actually said in the end was wrong. But there actually is a good point buried in there, a good point which I feel is important and too often forgotten.

And I'm not at my most coherent at the moment.

TRiG.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I realise that I've just said that the reference to Dawkins was inaccurate, and then said that Dawkins was wrong. Bah. Sorry. Now I don't know what I think. It's a side issue, anyway. And my memory of what Dawkins said in The God Delusion does not quite jive with the article on his site I linked to above. And the Wikipedia article Ana linked to isn't quite detailed enough. Perhaps we should go back to talking about feminism.

***

My current reading is An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, by Janet Holmes. And today, over dinner, I was reading the section in the book on sex differences in speech. In Western English-speaking communities (and most of the data comes from white middle class adults), men interrupt far more than women do. In cross-sex interactions, 75% of the interruptions came from males. And that was in a lab. In more natural settings, the percentage goes up to near 100%.

Women are evidentially socialised from early childhood to expect to be interrupted. Consequently, they generally give up the floor with little or no protest.

And,

In an interesting range of this research, it is quite clearly gender rather than occupational status, social class, or some other social factor, which most adequately accounts for the interactional patterns described. Women doctors were consistently interrupted by their patients, while male doctors did most of the interrupting in their consultations. A study of women in business organisations showed that women bosses did not dominate the interactions. Males dominated regardless of whether they were boss or subordinate. The societally subordinate position of women reflected in these patterns has more to do with gender than role or occupation. For this data at least, women's subordinate position in a male-dominated society seems the most obvious explanatory factor.

I'm not sure why she contrasts women with males, or whether anything should be read into that.

TRiG.

[Loquat]

Anyone know at what point in US history it became "normal" to wean children early? I remember reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, which is set in the first decade or so of the 20th century, and in one scene presents the memorable image of a toddler standing next to his sitting mother, leaning an elbow on her knee and suckling on her breast in the manner of a man leaning on a bar smoking a cigar. Mind you, this is an inconvenience to the mother, but primarily because it means she doesn't have enough milk left to feed her second-born baby.

Then there's the Game of Thrones TV series, where late breastfeeding is used to ratchet up the creepy factor of overprotective mother Lysa Arryn and emphasize her son's failure to mature - the kid's supposed to be 7 or 8, and he's consistently shown acting like a toddler.

[Ruby]

Timothy: Meanwhile, I'm being distracted by the inaccurate references to Richard Dawkins, because I don't think he's entirely wrong, though I do think he overgeneralises from his examples. He's wrong. A religious upbringing is not child abuse. But it can be.

I agree with you, Timothy. It's especially interesting in this case, too, because the example he used was a woman who wrote to him about her experiences. So in that sense, it does seem to tie into the "trust women" theme. Especially because she was asking to be trusted in saying something that puts a lot of people off: that, for her, the mental abuse she suffered at the hands of the church was worse than the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a priest.

[Rodeobob]

You want to talk about choice, then we have to talk about trust. What are we trusting?

I, as a feminist, trust that the woman involved is a smart, logical woman who is able to weigh her needs and her situation, and those of her loved child, and make intelligent decisions for her unique situation.

Here's the catch: breastfeeding feels good for both mother and child. Studies show it triggers a release of Oxytocin in the mother's bloodstream, making her feel more relaxed and happy. It's described as a "powerful bonding experience". None of those things are inherently bad, (they're actually quite good at a young age!) but those kinds of strong emotional reactions do tend to impair one's ability to make logical, intelligent decisions. You don't get to tout that powerful emotional experience as a benefit of breastfeeding without acknowledging that it has the potential to negatively influence judgement.

The phrase mutually desired by mother and child has another red flag for me. It's not just that the mother might be influenced by a strong emotional response away from what would rationally be a good choice, it's also that we're implicitly trusting the child to make a good decision here. We can't apply adult standards here (intelligent, logical, rational) for obvious reasons, but we also can't trust the child to make an independent decision here. Not only is there that powerful emotional reaction to consider, but the fundamental power imbalance between a child and a parent. If a child is aware that their mother wants to continue nursing, is aware that the mother places value in that activity, that's a powerfully coercive influence that can be difficult to guard against, especially if the mother is already somewhat irrational. (say, from a conditioned, strong emotional experience...)

Now, lest I get flamed to a crisp, I'm not saying this applies to every mother in every situation. Irrational thinking is invisible; no one knows what anyone else is actually thinking. But when the visibile behavior starts to look irrational, that's when people start paying attention. Can the child feed itself to some degree? Is there a value in an activity that excludes Dad and every other family member? Is this behavior preventing learning how to eat normally, or preventing the typical learned socializing that comes with eating meals with others? For a newborn these are easy questions to answer. (no, yes, no) For a five-year-old, the questions are not so clear-cut. (probably, maybe, yes to some degree)

It's nice to say "everyone's situation is different", but most people's situations aren't that different. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but that doesn't mean we throw out the rules! If you hold down your child and deprive them of air until they pass out, we call it child abuse and when we see it, we object; there may be a special exception for your specific child where forcing them into unconsciousness is necessary for their overall health, but could you really be surprised that people aren't away of your unusual exception? Isolating a young child during mealtimes, and feeding them in a way that requires almost total passivity on their part is not part of the typical shared experience, and it's unrealistic and unfair to expect others to assume your violation of norms is always driven by special exceptions that are noble and just.

As a society, we draw lines, knowing they don't apply to every case every time. We still draw those lines though. Persons under the age of 18 cannot provide meaningful, informed consent, not for sexual activity, legal contracts, or refusing medical treatment because of religious beliefs. Are there exceptions? Maybe, but those exceptions don't invalidate the norms. Every child is different to some degree or another, but we still agree, as a society, that children should not sleep in their parent's beds forever; we might disagree on exactly when it should stop, but just because I won't state a hard-and-fast rule doesn't mean there shouldn't be any rules.

[Ruby]

Bay: While we're distracted by boobs: is it normal to be afraid of nursing? I'm not nearly as apprehensive about it as childbirth, which scares the shit out of me primarily because I don't handle pain well, but I'm getting to the age where I'm thinking about babies and yet...

I have no idea how many women are afraid. Thinking about it (as a current non-parent), I suppose I am slightly apprehensive at the prospect because I have incredibly sensitive skin.

I have seem women argue that one of the best reasons to get a kid off the breast before toddlerhood is the teeth factor, though I imagine that is yet another case of Everyone Is Different.

[cjmr]

Rodeobob--you aren't giving children enough credit. My youngest child made it clear at 13 MONTHS! that breast-feeding was no longer mutually desired by both mother and child. I *knew* she was most likely to be my last infant. I was willing to nurse her as long as she wanted to, despite the fact that the older two had been weaned on my schedule not theirs. One day she nursed, the next day she didn't. And never wanted to or tried to again.

Even young children have agency--if you listen to them and LET THEM.

[cjmr]

Also, RodeoBob--most of the time when a woman says, "My child breast-fed until age 5" (in modern America), they are usually talking about comfort nursing or sedative nursing, not nursing to provide the major source of calories and nutrients for the child.

[Wysteria]

Is there a value in an activity that excludes Dad and every other family member?

Rodeobob, I am a bit puzzled by what seems to be implicit in your post - that breast feeding must be done with no other family members present (in as hidden and shameful a way as possible?). There are a lot of cultural things that sorta pass me by, but I thought culture was more likely to tend towards dad not necessarily hiding in the bathroom while mom breastfed baby, or vice versa?

[Ruby]

cjmr: Rodeobob--you aren't giving children enough credit. My youngest child made it clear at 13 MONTHS! that breast-feeding was no longer mutually desired by both mother and child. I *knew* she was most likely to be my last infant. I was willing to nurse her as long as she wanted to, despite the fact that the older two had been weaned on my schedule not theirs. One day she nursed, the next day she didn't. And never wanted to or tried to again.

Even young children have agency--if you listen to them and LET THEM.

But having some small degree of agency is different from making an adult decision, which (it appears to me) is RodeoBob's point. I "made it clear" at six months that I was ready for the bottle, and while I might call that agency, I'm not sure I'd even go so far as to call it a "decision," at least in the same way that I call "decisions" that I make 30 years later.

[Ruby]

Wow, that's the quickest spam I've seen in quite some time...

[Ruby]

And the quickest removal: You guys are good! :D

[AnaMardoll]

[tw: priest abuse]

I realise that I've just said that the reference to Dawkins was inaccurate, and then said that Dawkins was wrong. Bah. Sorry.

I will say, after double-checking, that the quote IS from Dawkins (you know that obviously, you linked to it! :)) but it is NOT apparently in the copy of God Delusion that I have on my computer.

Gurer vf, ubjrire, n 'avpr' yvggyr gnatrag ba ubj n tvey orvat sbaqyrq ol n cevrfg vf 'zvyq' pbzcnerq gb n obl orvat fbqbzvmrq ol bar, whfg va pnfr lbh jnagrq gung ynfg yvggyr cneg bs lbhe fbhy gb qvr. Zvar qvq, naljnl.

I know what he MEANS by that but that is Feminism: Doin It Wrong if I ever saw it. :)

(Someday I will have a Slack Special where I DON'T derail it in the first 20 comments, I swear!!) :)

[RodeoBob]

Rodeobob--you aren't giving children enough credit.
Damn right I'm not! Or, to be more precise, I'm not about to give children the responsibility that comes with that credit. If they show autonomy early, great! But I'm not about to suggest a system that depends in part on it, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

Rodeobob, I am a bit puzzled by what seems to be implicit in your post - that breast feeding must be done with no other family members present (in as hidden and shameful a way as possible?).
Oh heavens no!

But breastfeeding does prohibit things like making conversation, sharing food, passing condiements, or being able to make comfortable eye contact with anyone but the mother. By 'comfortable' I mean looking directly at, versus out of the side of the eye... I could be mistaken on the mechanics, but breastfeeding doesn't allow for a whole lot of turning the head to one side or the other, at least not comfortably or for long periods of time. The body-language of a child breastfeeding isn't what I'd call "open" or "attentive to anyone but Mom".

The whole family can be at the dinner table while Mom and child nurse! But the child isn't facing anyone but Mom, isn't looking at anyone but Mom easily, isn't talking or socializing or passing dishes or being active and part of the social environment. That's the simple physical dynamics of it, and for infants, that's fine, but once children reach an age where socializing is healthy and learning the rituals of mealtime appropriate, having them literally turned away from everyone but Mom does strike me as less than optimal.

Have to rush to dinner, but I'll be back. After reading up on 'comfort nursing' and 'sedative nursing'...

[AnaMardoll]

Studies show it triggers a release of Oxytocin in the mother's bloodstream, making her feel more relaxed and happy... You don't get to tout that powerful emotional experience as a benefit of breastfeeding without acknowledging that it has the potential to negatively influence judgement.

(If I may make a suggestion, I might recommend being mindful of your 'yous'. I, the OP, haven't touted *anything* as a benefit for breastfeeding. And I haven't seen anyone in this thread mention Oxytocin before you brought it up. So I'm not sure who the "you can't tout it..." is directed to. But on the assumption you were speaking to a general you...)

I most certainly can! :)

Because I'm not automatically on-board with the idea that the possibility for pleasure negatively impacts judgment. I'm going to need to see some citation for that, because I've seen it used from everything to fat-shaming to evo-psych rape apologetics, and now breastfeeding mothers unable to tell when to wean their children because THE PLEASURES, THEY CONFUSE MY BRAIN, and I'm not convinced.

[warning: tmi]

Having sex gives me all kinds of pleasure, and it *definitely* makes me relaxed and happy. I'm pretty sure I've orgasmed during every consensual PIV sexual encounter I've ever had, so I have anecdotal reason to believe that every penis on earth is an orgasm-depenser, should the penis-owner be willing to engage in sexy fun times with me.

Funnily enough, however, the fact that sex gives me pleasure has not, in fact, turned me into a mindless pleasure-seeking machine that consistently makes bad decisions in favor of getting my shiny orgasms. I have, in fact, turned down sexy funtimes from various available penises at various times for various 'good judgment' reasons! The lost shiny-orgasms didn't weigh into my judgment at all, even! Almost like I'm a mature human being and not the sum of a collection of hormonal impulses seeking my own pleasure over all other considerations!

I trust that holds true for other women, as well. Getting pleasure from sex is a nice thing and all, but the fact that the pleasure exists doesn't turn off my good judgment. In the same way, it's great that nursing gives women pleasure, but the existence of that pleasure is no reason whatsoever to assume that the woman's good judgment is in question.

[Mike Timonin]

Our first daughter nursed until 3 or 4. My comment is based on that experience, as a father.

by the point a child is 2 or 3, nursing at the table is unnecessary, generally. At 2 or 3, the child is probably eating solids, probably some version of what the rest of the family is eating. Nursing is in response to trauma (comfort nursing) or at bedtime (sedative nursing), not for nutrition. Somewhere in there, we were sharing a house with my in laws - you can bet that nursing was not at the table. My mil was willing to put up with a whole bunch of "earth mothering" stuff, and was even moderately supportive, but her granddaughter nursing at the table would have been a bit much, I think.

Somewhere around 3 or 4, we spent a week with my parents in adjoining hotel rooms. Daughter announced at that point that she no longer wanted to nurse, as her grandparents might see, and so she stopped.

The current infant will almost certainly not go as late as 4 years. She's 11 months now (almost) and is already semi-weaned. At present, nursing has reached the comfort/sedative stage, and is mostly at bedtime. Further, if she thinks something more interesting is going on somewhere else, she will pop off and check that out.

To add gasoline to the fire, we are also co-sleepers.

[AnaMardoll]

Is there a value in an activity that excludes Dad and every other family member?

I feel like I'm missing a point here, but...yes?

My mother and I have several activities that exclude Dad and every other family member. My father and I have several activities that exclude Mom and every other family member. While they're in the same room, even!*

(* Can you believe that Dad and I are the only people in our family who like to talk about The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy for hours on end? Please will the rest of you adopt me? It's so sad, really.)

[AnaMardoll]

If you hold down your child and deprive them of air until they pass out, we call it child abuse and when we see it, we object

I would like to pre-emptively ask that this thread NOT turn into "X is child abuse, so therefore breastfeeding can be too!"

I ask this for three reasons:

1. I've already said, in comments, that a parent can be abusive in almost any way, should they so choose.

2. There is no therefore reason to turn this thread into a trigger-fest of abuse examples, as per Point #1.

3. This is not a post about abuse. It is a post about using "feelings" and "common sense" and "I know it when I see it" subjectivity to shame and attack mothers.

Choking a child until they pass out is OBJECTIVELY child abuse because if you choke a child for that long you will kill it or severely damage their physical body, probably irreparably. This is a fact. Nursing a child for "too long" is not abuse until you -- or anyone wanting to claim that it is -- cites an actual study of actual harm caused by full-term nursing. Your subjective feelings that SURELY IT MUST BE SO BECAUSE IT GROSSES ME OUT are not good enough, and Arguing By Analogy (choking is abusive, so therefore Jasper!) is not good enough.

At least, those are my feelings on the matter.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

While we're all getting distracted by boobies ....

TRiG.

[AnaMardoll]

And I apologize if that was worded harshly, but I feel very strongly about comparing choking-a-child with feeding-a-child, even hypothetically.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Can you believe that Dad and I are the only people in our family who like to talk about The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy for hours on end?

I had a friend in secondary school I spent almost every lunchtime with for a couple of years. It didn't matter what was happening or what we were talking about; before lunch was over we were talking about Hitchhiker's. Later, he was one of a couple of people who turned me on to Pratchett.

TRiG.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

The choking example confused me, because he seemed to be saying that in some specific (though rare) circumstances it would be the right thing to do. At which point my brain went Bwa?!

TRiG.

[Brin]

TRiG: While we're all getting distracted by boobies ....

*applause*

(Now why didn't I think of that...)

[Lonespark]

Is there a value in an activity that excludes Dad and every other family member?

I...if there's a dad in the picture, he's probably making his opinion known. That doesn't give random stranger extra judging privileges.

I was gonna post that this reminded me fondly of my widowed friend (no, the other one, not the new one with twins) nursing her three-year-old and how when he learned to talk he used to ask to "murse" for comfort after his dad died suddenly. So clearly I'm not "objective" about it...but pretty much nobody is.

[chris the cynic]

People who do not feel pleasure are suffering from extremely severe depression. That might understate the matter. EXTREMELY severe depression. That's probably closer to accurate.

I've had depression so badly that there were times I was incapable of doing anything more involved than hitting the refresh key on my keyboard. (F5, the only function key I use with any kind of regularity) but I've never had an extended period of time when pleasure shut down entirely. Muted, dull, like experienced so slightly it resembled a sound so distant you're not sure if you heard it or imagined it, so dim you can barely tell that it is pleasure and not more of the same, yes. Gone completely, no.

People feel pleasure. It's a part of life. A person without any pleasure is a person for which something is very wrong. Which means that most breastfeeding* mothers are going to be getting pleasure out of something in their lives regardless of whether or not they continue breastfeeding. Perhaps it's looking at their baby, perhaps it's listening to music by members of the Guthrie family, perhaps it's tetris, or movies, or sunsets, or walking, or the sound of birds in the morning, or a puppy, or knitting fractal patterns, or ice cream, or salsa dancing, or salsa eating, or investigating the etymology of the word squirrel, or creating a puns that use three different origins of the word 'bark', or reading deconstructions, or reading things that ought to be deconstructed, or driving, or watching football games, or watching people debate which game should be called football, or watching Once Upon A Time, or shopping, or selling, or making jewelry, or making airplanes, or whatever.

For a given mother there are probably plenty of things other than breastfeeding that give her pleasure and as far as I know no one is making the argument that we can't trust her to make rational decisions about that. Pleasure does not destroy the ability make rational decisions. If it did then they only people capable of making rational decisions would be those who are suffering from severe emotional problems.

(It should be pointed out that I have been told that the people best able to predict correct odds of success and failure are in fact those suffering from depression, but it should also be pointed out that in spite of this apparent advantage, such people do not appear more likely to make rational decisions.)

Anyway, unless we're taking away all of the ice cream and the sports and the entertainment and the sunsets, I think we as a culture have decided that people can generally be trusted with things that cause them pleasure.

Making the argument that someone can't be trusted to make decisions about something because it makes her feel good seems, to me, to ignore reality. People are trusted to make decisions about things that feel good to them all the time. When someone decides to go to work instead of taking the day off and doing something they like (for my mother it would probably be skiing or watching romantic comedies) that person is making a decision involving something that makes them feel good, and deciding not to do the thing that makes them feel good.

-

*I suddenly do not like the verb. On reflection, I think it's 'feeding' that I do not like. If I provide you with nourishment, I am feeding [you]. If you eat the nourishment, you are feeding. It should not be the same word. When I wrote "breastfeeding mothers" I thought, "That can't be right. It's 'breastfeeding babies'. There must be a different verb for what the mothers are doing." But there isn't, is there? It's the same verb, isn't it?

[Lonespark]

Also what cjmr said about kids making their own needs clear.

Bay: It's very normal to be scared of or squicked out by nursing. Sometimes those feelings change when the actual babies arrives, and sometimes they don't. Breast-feeding, formula feeding, or some combination can all work out great.

[Lonespark]

A baby booby. Well done, sir.

[chris the cynic]

The baby booby is adorable, but it doesn't look real to me. It looks like someone stuck a beak and some feet onto an irregularly shaped snowball. A snowbooby, if you will.

[Lonespark]

Well, now know what to have for a slacktivite meetup group project if it snows!

[AnaMardoll]

Chris, I love your comment so much. Thank you. :)

[Timothy (TRiG)]

The baby booby is from the BBC News website, so it's probably real. Admittedly, the BBC's science output is of somewhat variable quality, but it's nature programmes are often first rate.

TRiG.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Ah. A misplaced apostrophe. It must be time for bed.

***

Seconding Ana's applause for chris' comment.

TRiG.

[chris the cynic]

I don't doubt that it is real, it just doesn't look real to me. There are plenty of things that are real that don't look real. Reality is funny that way.

And thank you Ana and TRiG.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Things that try to look like things often look more like things than things.

[AnaMardoll]

Well, I don't know about that, but I know that things that look like mushrooms but AREN'T are dangerous. ;)

[Kit Whitfield]

@Rodeobob: you are coming at this all wrong. The point about nursing, beyond the nutritional benefits, is precisely that it's a pleasurable experience for the child. Cold, 'rational' child-rearing produces chilled children. Most of our brain development happens in the first three years, and it continues through childhood: experiencing pleasurable and safe human contact is extremely good for a child's neurological development. Children who aren't cuddled fail to thrive, fail to develop social understanding, struggle to regulate their own emotions, and generally speaking take a lot of damage that'll dog them throughout life, and sometimes makes them dangerous to others as well because their empathy never got 'switched on' by experiencing human warmth. Denying children pleasurable human contact is really, really bad for them.

Now, I should stress that I'm not saying it's damaging to a child to be weaned in infancy, because that would be ridiculous. But 'comfort nursing' is one form of safe, pleasurable contact between mother and child, and safe, pleasurable human contact is, neurologically speaking, utterly vital to a child's development. The fact that it's pleasurable is a reason to do it, not a reason to decide it's irrational. If the child doesn't find it pleasurable any more, he or she will stop doing it; if he or she enjoys it, the enjoyment is an end it itself.

As to excluding Dad ... trust me, every parent needs a break every now and again. It's not as if nursing a toddler excludes the father from his or her life. It's just a mother-and-child activity. Would you say it was bad to exclude mothers if a father took the kid out for a little dad time? That it excludes the parents every time Granny reads the bedtime story? That it excludes the parents if two siblings play together? Family relationships don't mean everyone relating to everyone every single second; they mean establishing individual relationships as well as a group one.

The fact that someone feels pleasure in an activity is not a reason to start saying they can't be trusted to make good judgements about it unless you have a problem with trusting them in general. As has been pointed out, people feel pleasure in all sorts of things; it's a meaningless point. Your post is offensive to both women and children: we are not subject to your self-declared 'rational' arbitration.

I find it strange and disturbing that you think the fact that an activity is pleasurable for both mother and child is a sign to question it. Pleasurable human interaction is one of the most important lessons a parent has to give a child.

[Kit Whitfield]

Addressing Ana's article - am I the only one who thinks that 'OMG breasts are sexual!' is the remark of someone who's never changed a nappy? The average child learns to speak at least basic sentences before they're toilet trained and able to wipe themselves; before then, they have their sexual organs cleaned by their caregivers maybe half a dozen times a day. And there's nothing sexual about it. Physical boundaries are different with young children.

[Deird, who has also taken life drawing classes - and didn't see anything sexual about that, either...]

Addressing Ana's article - am I the only one who thinks that 'OMG breasts are sexual!' is the remark of someone who's never changed a nappy? The average child learns to speak at least basic sentences before they're toilet trained and able to wipe themselves; before then, they have their sexual organs cleaned by their caregivers maybe half a dozen times a day. And there's nothing sexual about it. Physical boundaries are different with young children.

They really are. I have wiped numerous bottoms, penises, and other miscellaneous parts. I have also had a three year old inspecting my breasts with a rather fascinated expression - since he couldn't quite understand why I had them if there wasn't a baby in my tummy.

None of these things struck me as being the least bit sexual. It's just standard life around little kids.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist!)]

@ Kit:

IMO, it can be chalked it up to being immature, Puritanical, or immature *and* Puritanical. One of the most delightful ironies in the world is that the more Puritanical and holy you're supposed to be the more immature and filthy your mind becomes. Even the most innocent thing becomes an expression of sexual "vice", and actual organs that can be used in "deviant" sex become a huge no-no. Case in point: Bill Gothard (*snicker*... okay, so I'm immature. I felt wrong just ignoring the irony in that name...); Jerry Jenkins (and cookies!) Also see: almost any religious right screed ever on marriage equality; some are more far more graphic than others (reading like bad slashfics), but Teh Buttsechs is an almost guaranteed topic.

[Ruby]

Lonespark: Well, now know what to have for a slacktivite meetup group project if it snows!

Weren't we talking about a possible Slacktivite field trip to the Creation Museum a few years ago?

'Cause I am still for this! We can make a baby snowbooby on the Museum's lawn. ;)

[chris the cynic]

I thought that was before my time, but I'm not actually sure if it was or it was just before I was paying much attention. Anyway, looking at the facebook page, it looks like the fieldtrip started being discussed something like two and a quarter years ago. So it seems to be long overdue.

That said, I don't think I could find a way to make it there any more than I could get to Melbourne or Hungary.

This is why we need to make those straight line gravity powered trains*. The entire world would be in reach.

-

*If you were to dig a tunnel straight from any point on the earth's surface to any other point on the earth's surface and somehow make travel through the tunnel frictionless (which is, of course, impossible) then the force of gravity would bring something from one end of the tunnel to the other in about 42 minutes. It doesn't matter how close or far apart the endpoints of the tunnel are.

This knowledge has always made me imagine air tight mag lev trains traveling through tunnels that are as close to a vacuum as technology will allow. Almost no energy would need to be expended in actually moving the train, leaving the power consumption to be mostly in keeping the train from touching the tracks and overcoming what friction could not be eliminated. (And in the life support system for the people on the train.)

Of course it would cost more money than anyone would ever spend to build such a thing and could only be accomplished for comparatively shorter distances since the earth is in fact hot and melty if you go too deep and doubtless many other problems as well, but I can dream, right?

[Kit Whitfield]

Regarding Rodeobob's claim that women can't be trusted to be rational about breastfeeding because it releases hormones:

Two things.

One. There are a lot of things you clearly either haven't encountered or didn't think of. For instance: handling the baby also releases pleasure hormones. For instance: the sound of your own baby crying (and no, other babies crying don't have the same effect, and yes, you can tell the difference) causes an elevated heart rate and releases all sorts of stress reactions.

For instance: as I've mentioned on the board, I had postnatal depression. For six months, I cuddled, played with, sang to, took out, fed, even smiled at my son, when biochemically speaking, all I was motivated to do was lie in my bed and cry. I was suffering a massive hormonal blow - but I did the right thing for my son nonetheless. He's a merry child; if my hormones had made my decisions, he'd be seriously damaged by now.

I have known quite a few other women who also suffered postnatal depression. They did the same thing I did. Their children are merry too, because they fought back against biochemistry like heroes.

You know what the primary skill of mothering a young child is? Making rational decisions despite the fact that you get slammed into one hormonal wall after another day after day. Thinking straight despite the hormonal rollercoaster is the baseline of decent motherhood. Women do it all day, every day, all over the world.

The fact that a particular activity releases particular hormones says nothing about how it affects a woman's ability to make the right decision. When it comes to thinking with your conscience instead of your hormones, mothers of young children are probably the strongest people in the world.

Second thing: yes, breastfeeding releases hormones, and stopping produces a hormonal crash. I've been advised, for instance, not to go off antidepressants until my son is fully weaned. There was a period where he was within about a week of weaning himself, but then I broke my arm, couldn't cuddle him as much, and he went back to nursing for a bit because he needed the extra reassurance.

In the period where he was weaning himself, yes, I struggled with the hormonal drop. I felt sad, fragile, upset; I wanted to nurse him again. But I didn't, because he was showing some independence and I believed it was right to support that. Then I went back to nursing, and felt some relief, but I did it because he was dealing with a big change in circumstances and I believed it was right to let him decide that he needed to touch base more than usual. What I felt and what I decided to do were determined by two completely different ways of being.

But in the period where a mother stops nursing, very often she does feel fragile. Saying that she's being 'irrational' and under the sway of her selfish hormones? That is kicking someone when they're down.

Mothering involves great biochemical upheaval. If you use that as an excuse to question mothers' judgement, you are disrespecting women, undermining parenting, and making harder the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in societies - young mothers and small children. Mothers need support and respect for how they deal with the hormonal extremes, not this 'irrational' nonsense.

[MercuryBlue]

mothers of young children are probably the strongest people in the world

And doing one of the most important jobs. Insert rant about how caring for children is only considered work if it's someone else's children, and about how caring for children is incredibly ill-paid work when it's paid at all. Insert side rant about how hard it is for single parents or both-working couples to find affordable daycare.

[Nick Kiddle]

//Children who aren't cuddled fail to thrive, fail to develop social understanding, struggle to regulate their own emotions, and generally speaking take a lot of damage that'll dog them throughout life, and sometimes makes them dangerous to others as well because their empathy never got 'switched on' by experiencing human warmth. Denying children pleasurable human contact is really, really bad for them. //

I have a feeling I told this story here a while ago, but: when xCLP was tiny, I started to incorporate a massage into the bedtime routine. The feeling of running my hands across such smooth soft skin was almost addictively wonderful - so great that I started to believe there was something wrong and potentially harmful about how much I was enjoying it. It took my then-therapist explaining with examples how essential touch is for babies before I could let go of that fear.

In a broader sense, this is why it's so ridiculous to think that mothers who nurse their babies past infancy haven't considered these "abuse" arguments. I was afraid because our culture is soaking in the message that getting sensual pleasure from interacting with your children is BADWRONGABUSE, and I doubt anyone escapes without picking it up. Making the decision to breastfeed past infancy means evaluating those messages and moving past them.

[Kit Whitfield]

@Nick Kiddle - exactly. The underlying idea seems to be that parenthood must be all sacrifice, and that if you yourself enjoy touching your child it must be bad. If I listened to that, I'd never pick my son up at all, because my heart aches with love whenever I hold him. People don't feel such strong emotions without thinking about them - and if you're the kind of person who loves your child that much, you're the kind of person who thinks carefully about what's in the child's best interests.

[Tonio]

Just about every society that attempts to control women focuses on their sexuality and reproductive ability, in many cases treating the latter as though it's community property. My working theory is that this is not merely about male power but about paternity, preventing wives from siring by other men and preventing husbands from raising other men's children. This attitude treats both women and children as property. But I doubt that mom-shaming fits neatly into my theory. What do you think?

what "trusting women" means is that I extend trust and respect to other women and I start from a position of assuming them to be logical, rational, good people. What "trusting women" means is that while I may not always agree with the choices other women make about their lives and their families and their careers and their spouses, I trust that they know more about their lives and their families and their careers and their spouses than I do.

I would expand this to apply to everyone regardless of gender when it comes to their personal lives. That trust means that the burden of proof is on any claim that a given individual is incompetent to judge what's best for hirself. The lack of trust hurts women far more in practice, but it's still an important principle for both genders.

[Jenny Islander]

In the U.S., the conventional wisdom certainly seems to be that breasts are for sexual titillation and product sales. It has been noted before that women on billboards hawking underwear, beer, and so forth are often considerably less covered up than women feeding babies with their breasts. Just having the baby's head right there provides more coverage than some of today's fashionable clothes. But because everybody knows breasts are for sex, a baby at the breast is creepy and wrong. There is also a sort of daintiness about women making milk with their bodies; formula is considered the clean, normal food, breastmilk the deviant and unclean substance.*

These attitudes were all over an MSNBC thread about a woman cited for feeding her baby with her breasts in public. Yes, I actually read the entire thread, well over a thousand comments. Providing milk for a baby was likened to public urination, unsolicited performance art, exhibitionism, masturbation, child sexual abuse (not just when done for a toddler--even feeding an infant was suspect!), etc., etc., etc. I finally posted, "It isn't my job to adjust my life so that nothing sets off your neurosis" and signed off. Haven't used my MSNBC comment login since.

*I am not arguing the opposite, although I do believe that some women are tricked into paying for formula when they could have breastfed if they had had the help and respect they deserve. And it is a documented fact that babies in countries where the water is not dependably clean have died on formula who would almost certainly have lived if their mothers had not been sold a bill of goods. But if I have another baby and my milk fails, I will use formula and bless its inventor.

[Jenny Islander]

Back more on topic: "Breasts are for sex, so feeding babies with breasts is gross" includes the assumption that women's bodies are meant for the enjoyment of random bystanders. That we are supposed to spend time adjusting ourselves to provide sexual titillation for other people, and if they can't settle into their favorite fantasies while watching us, it's our fault. This is why I think of breastfeeding as a feminist issue.

"Formula is the clean, healthy, normal choice and breastmilk is the dirty, rebellious, and unhealthy choice" strikes right at the heart of society's lack of respect for women. A woman's body is a broken, inadequate thing by definition. Formula is pushed on women who can't afford it; new mothers who can't immediately breastfeed like pros are told that they will never be able to do it; medical professionals even tell them that a normal supply of breastmilk must be augmented or the baby will starve (yes, even today!). If respect for women were a given, formula would return to what it once was: a life-saving substitute for unavailable breastmilk.

[Tonio]

As a straight man I admit that I enjoy the sight of female flesh. Twice in the last couple of years I've been in social situations where a great deal of breast was visible and I was strongly tempted to look. Only one of these involved breast-feeding. Like the monk in the Zen story about the stream, even though I wasn't staring in reality, I was still staring in my mind.* But I would tell this to any other straight man in the world - that was MY problem and not the problem of the woman. Both times I made a point of looking away from the woman, which was simply another way of disrespecting her.

*When Lois Lane arrived in Smallville and was confronted by a naked (and possessed) Clark Kent, she had to remind herself to look at his face. Both the episode's writers were male, and I suspect this scene reflected less of how women would actually act in that situation and more of how men imagine women would act in that situation.

[Kit Whitfield]

When Lois Lane arrived in Smallville and was confronted by a naked (and possessed) Clark Kent, she had to remind herself to look at his face. Both the episode's writers were male, and I suspect this scene reflected less of how women would actually act in that situation and more of how men imagine women would act in that situation.

Er - if I were confronted with a handsome man who was stark naked, I'd certainly have to put some effort into stopping my eyes from wandering. Women are human, and human beings like to look at people they find attractive.

[Tonio]

Women are human, and human beings like to look at people they find attractive.

While that's true, when men write scenes like that in fiction, it doesn't seem like a realistic depiction of a human desire. Instead, it seems more like a fantasy sequence for male writers and viewers, where they want women to drool over them.

[Kit Whitfield]

@Tonio - I haven't seen the scene you're talking about, so it's possible that it's poorly executed, but I'd like to raise the flag for women knowing what we're talking about when we're talking about our own reactions here. Women do drool over men when we feel safe.

[Tonio]

Women do drool over men when we feel safe.

Of course. I'm not contesting that. My point is about how male writers often treat that behavior. A better example would be the early James Bond films, which were largely about fulfilling a certain type of male fantasy. I liked how the first Austin Powers film (not ordinarily one of my favorites) parodied the essential cartoonishness of the secret agent as sex symbol.

Here's the Lane and Kent scene.

[MercuryBlue]

Somebody's got the relevant clip up on Youtube if you want to check it out. Having just refreshed my memory, I'm leaning towards Tonio's side. Lois is confronted with a complete wild card, with brains sufficiently scrambled that he can't even tell her his name. I can't imagine she'd be feeling all that safe.

[Ross]

Back in the 80s, when I was an infant, and then later when my sister was an infant (Though I guess I had probably been weened by the time the 80s started. Can't say for sure.), formula was the sort of default assumption, and breastfeedign was absolutely viewed as a sort of weird quirky thing that was only ever done in the third world or if your mother was a hippie.

One thing they repeated many times in the childbirth class, in the breastfeeding class, and in the infant care class (We took these three classes over the past couple of weeks) was to be assertive and not let the hospital strongarm you into formula feeding at the first sign of difficulty, because there were lactation consultants on-hand who could help, and 99.99999% of mothers can successfully nurse with the right education and assistance.

Finally, in the last class we attended, one of the expectant mothers said "Are they going to do that? Try to make me formula feed when I want to breastfeed?" and the nurse thought for a second and said, "No, not really. That was really more of a thing back in the 80s. No one does that any more. They're more likely than anything to try to encourage you to keep trying to breastfeed."

Given just how much emphasis was placed on the idea "don't give up trying to breastfeed no matter what," I'm much more worried that if something *is* a serious impediment, we (by which I mean "My wife, but with whatever support I am able to give her) won't recognize that it's time to try something else.

[Kit Whitfield]

99.99999% of mothers can successfully nurse with the right education and assistance.

I'm all in favour of proper education and assistance, but this figure is an exaggeration that tends to mum-shaming in the other direction, ie casting it as an aberration or a failure if a woman isn't able to nurse.

It's more complicated than that. Nursing takes cooperation from the baby, and some babies don't cooperate. Caesarean sections tend to make it harder to lactate because it's vaginal delivery that sets the system going and you miss that. Various medications, which a woman might need to take to preserve her own health, can also suppress lactation. Lack of education, assistance or motivation are common reasons why a woman don't establish breastfeeding, but there are other factors as well, and they account for more than 0.00001 per cent.

As to when it's time to try something else: with a small baby, there are basically two times. Either the baby is starving, which healthcare providers should pick up, or the mother has had enough, which isn't something to 'recognise' because it's a subjective decision. But believe me, problems with breastfeeding are recognisable. The kind of circumstances you'd be seeing would be pain or lack of rest tending towards a breakdown. A friend of mine from antenatal class, for instance, started giving her son a bottle of formula last thing at night (which is slower to digest than breast milk and hence helps a baby sleep for longer) because her son would nurse for an hour and a half at a time, sleep for an hour and a half, then wake up and want more milk - and he'd do this round the clock. After a few weeks she simply couldn't function. Likewise, another friend of mine had a baby who wouldn't nurse; she stuck to expressing for the first three months because she knew that's the critical phase, but that meant all day was either expressing or feeding with no rest at all, and after three months she moved to formula and never looked back. Both kids are healthy and gorgeous today and took no harm at all, but the point is, the time to try something else wasn't something subtle and easy to be pressured out of. It was a breaking point. You know when you're at breaking point and when you're not.

[Ross]

I'm all in favour of proper education and assistance, but this figure is an exaggeration that tends to mum-shaming in the other direction, ie casting it as an aberration or a failure if a woman isn't able to nurse.

Yes, and that worries me a lot. I imagine that their number also includes an awful lot of cases of "Can technically accomplish it successfully, but only with far more effort that is remotely reasonable, and producing a less than optimal outcome," which is probably your Perfect Mother popping up again to tell you that all failure is just a form of not-trying-hard-enough.

Both kids are healthy and gorgeous today and took no harm at all, but the point is, the time to try something else wasn't something subtle and easy to be pressured out of. It was a breaking point. You know when you're at breaking point and when you're not.

That's comforting.

[Mmy]

One thing they repeated many times in the childbirth class, in the breastfeeding class, and in the infant care class (We took these three classes over the past couple of weeks) was to be assertive and not let the hospital strongarm you into formula feeding at the first sign of difficulty, because there were lactation consultants on-hand who could help, and 99.99999% of mothers can successfully nurse with the right education and assistance.

I would really like to see some reputable scientific sourcing for that claim (which I understand to be the claim that they were making to you.)

There are people who are as adamant that every women really could breastfeed as they are that every woman really could give birth "naturally." All the reputable, scientific, well-researched, cross-country, cross-cultural studies I know of indicate that the success rate is much lower than that.

[cjmr]

I've never heard the 99.999999% figure. I have heard (from midwives) an estimate of 93% or so, which seems more 'reasonable'. And they were careful to present it as an estimate, not a fact.

-----

TW: Childbirth

After cjmr's eldest was born, I was sure I'd *never* try to give birth naturally again. (My labor stopped after my water broke and they induced me, so I ended up with an epidural that was only 70% effective.) I had a voluntary epidural with middle child. Y'all know what happened with seedling/Evenstar. Some people can certainly do all-natural childbirth, every time, but I'm not one of them.

[Alleyne]

But breastfeeding does prohibit things like making conversation, sharing food, passing condiements, or being able to make comfortable eye contact with anyone but the mother. By 'comfortable' I mean looking directly at, versus out of the side of the eye... I could be mistaken on the mechanics, but breastfeeding doesn't allow for a whole lot of turning the head to one side or the other, at least not comfortably or for long periods of time. The body-language of a child breastfeeding isn't what I'd call "open" or "attentive to anyone but Mom".

You're quite mistaken on the mechanics. Breastfeeding may tie up an arm, or both, but not the neck, for pete's sake. (Have you ever held a baby?) As myriad mothers will tell you, especially during the newborn period and growth spurts, if you don't learn quickly how to nurse with one hand (or no hands, with a sling) and multitask, your life will start to fall down around your ears. This is how mothers parent their older children when they have nurslings. This is how the lunch and the dinner get made, the laundry gets done, the papers get written or graded, books read, phone calls made and emails sent. I've watched women nurse while pushing another child in a stroller walking through a mall, while singing first soprano in rehearsal for a choir Christmas cantata and while directing a cast of 40 in a musical theatre production. Once someone figures it out, it can be fairly easy. (Until the kiddo is at the squirmy toddler stage, but then, nursings tend to be brief and less frequent except at designated times.) If a conversation is hampered because a woman is nursing, it's not because the woman can't turn her head.

[MaryKaye]

One of the valuable things that can be learned from being in clothing-optional settings is that "sexual" is something we do, not something we are. The same body parts that are intensely sexual when we are doing sex can be perfectly neutral when we aren't. Our society's tendency to treat them as always-sexual just muddies the water.

There's an interesting story in Nolan's autobiography _The Making of a Surgeon_. As a young MD he'd been doing breast exams a lot and thinking nothing of it--all in a day's work. Then he met a patient who had broken her arm and needed the cast replaced. She took off her coat and turned out not to be wearing anything underneath it, and as he tells it, his eyes bugged out--because he was not in the "breasts as technical tasks" mindset at that moment, having been expecting a broken arm....

A sickness in American (at least) society is that men are not expected to develop the discipline of separating sexual and non-sexual contexts, and woman are expected to cover for this deficiency. Many American men of course develop it anyway--they have to change diapers too--but it's worrisome that it's not expected of them. This leads to all sorts of ridiculousness, like requiring lipstick as business attire on women, or judging swimsuits by how they look rather than whether the wearer can swim in them, or bringing up what a woman was wearing at a rape trial.

[Mike Timonin]

You're quite mistaken on the mechanics. Breastfeeding may tie up an arm, or both, but not the neck, for pete's sake.

In RodeoBob's defense, I think he was referring to the effect of breastfeeding upon the potentially verbal child - ie, if 5 year old is nursing, then 5 year old can't hold a conversation with 5 year old's dad.

[Laiima]

I know the thread has moved on, and this is not an attempt to derail (I just don't know anything about breastfeeding - I wasn't and no one I know was, as children in the 1960s), but I wanted to offer anecdotal evidence supporting Timothy (TRiG)'s comment about men interrupting all the time, esp male doctors.

My GP in Indiana was a guy. One of his sons, the one he had the most trouble with, had ADD (as do I), so every doctor visit, I would hear in great detail about his problems with this son, rather than listening to me talking about oh, the medical problem I came to see him about. It was utterly infuriating. Oh, and despite knowing *nothing* about my family history except that I'd stopped talking to my parents -- because he felt guilty about never seeing his own kids (Type A personality) -- he also exerted social pressure on me to forgive my parents and take them back. He would not listen when I told him that was impossible and was not going to happen, ever. (He did not pull crap like this with Spouse.)

In Maryland, the first doctor I saw here was a guy, but he had no idea what was wrong with me, and he didn't seem very interested in helping me figure it out. So I started going to a woman doctor instead. She's notorious for waiting times in her office because she will listen to her patients, no matter *how long they talk*. I don't mind (the waiting). Whenever I've had an emergency, she's found a way to fit me in. She asks questions, insightful ones. And she rarely even mentions her own stuff, even if you ask. That's refreshing.

[Jake]

In RodeoBob's defense, I think he was referring to the effect of breastfeeding upon the potentially verbal child - ie, if 5 year old is nursing, then 5 year old can't hold a conversation with 5 year old's dad.

I think that's true, but he's still wrong about a lot of it. It's true that the child's mouth is occupied, so conversation is out, but in my experience of spending a fair bit of time with a few women who have breastfed into toddlerhood, a child that wants to nurse isn't in the mood for conversation anyway. And RodeoBob is flat wrong about eye contact. Nursing children's eyes frequently wander to the other people in the room, and I have on numerous occasions made extended eye contact with, made faces at, and otherwise connected with, a child who was nursing.

I think that there is something very powerfully bonding about feeding a child, and I've always felt a little sad that the small people I've been closest to were never bottle fed, so I could never cuddle and feed them simultaneously (although I could spoon-feed them when they got old enough), so I can see how a dad might feel a little left out of that ritual, but I really strongly feel like that's not a good enough reason for outsiders to object.

I also 100% agree with Kit that treating childrearing as a rational exercise is not only not the best thing to do, it's entirely unrealistic to expect anyway, so we may as well give up on the idea and talk about reality.

[Kit Whitfield]

In RodeoBob's defense, I think he was referring to the effect of breastfeeding upon the potentially verbal child - ie, if 5 year old is nursing, then 5 year old can't hold a conversation with 5 year old's dad.

By which logic, the child must be on parade at all times and ready to perform the instant the father wants him or her to. Curling up with a book is out because it occupies the eyes. String and percussion instruments only, because wind instruments occupy the mouth. No exercise, because it directs the breath into panting rather than talking.

These sound ridiculous, yes? But somehow, when it comes to a mother-child activity that a father can't do, suddenly Rodeobob is performing backflips to find a way of 'proving' that it's a bad thing.

Sorry, but I think the 'rational' bit is just rationalising. He's either squicked out by the idea of nursing past infancy or uncomfortable with the idea that the family doesn't revolve around the father every minute of the day, and is coming up with silly 'reasons' that bear no relationship to practical childrearing.

[Lonespark]

To go along with what Jake said, I have so many extremely fond memories of bottle feeding and snuggling my son, and my daughter too, although she nursed longer. I would lie down on the couch, with the baby against the back of the couch, and lie on my side, with the baby's head propped in the crook of my elbow (to hopefully avoid ear infections or reflux). The babies would eat, and snuggle, and look at me with their beady little eyes, and pat me with their wee hands, or hold my fingers...and then eventually I'd feel like my arm holding the bottle was going to fall off...They would often drink themselves to sleep.

Nowadays we do something similar for a going to bed ritual, where they prop their heads on my arm and I hold up a book and read it...and I quickly feel like my arm is going to fall off, especially since my son is partial to large hardcover volumes about animal facts, or Norse Myths...and if it's one child, we snuggle off to dreamland, but it's usually both of them, with one complaining that they want an arm under their head too, and the other one's story choice is too long...but still, snuggly awesome.

[AnaMardoll]

I would expand this to apply to everyone regardless of gender when it comes to their personal lives.

Well... yes. I mean, I certainly didn't mean to give reason to believe that I didn't trust men, just because I didn't explicitly call out "and men too!" in a post about women and mom-shaming and breastfeeding. But this post... is not really about cis men.

I think that as a culture, we sort of DO trust men quite a bit. In the referenced 600+ comment post about women, breastfeeding, and "women who breastfeed too long are child abusers", I don't think that anyone explicitly blamed a father for a breastfeeding situation because naturally if there was "breastfeeding abuse" in a family, it was all the mother's fault.

More generally, I have found that I and the other women in my life frequently have to invoke MEN! before our wishes will be respected by strangers. My aunt used to borrow my dad (her younger brother) when she went car shopping because she knew exactly what car she wanted, but the salesmen wouldn't listen to her say so. But when dad would 'tell' her, "This is the care you need, Susie" the salesmen would beam and back off. For myself, as recently as a few months ago, the only way I could convince a blood donation place to stop calling was to stop saying, "I'm sorry, blood donation makes me sick" and instead say, "I'm sorry, my husband doesn't like me to donate blood because he thinks it makes me sick." Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, well, we'll take you off the calling list, good-bye. WTF.

Of course, our culture doesn't 'trust men' to buy the 'right' beer or eat the 'right' food or use the 'right' deodorant, but that's a function of the odious advertising culture we live in where "convincing people they have poor judgment" is a corner-stone of making money. So there's that and that is absolutely not okay. But in terms of on-the-ground day to day shaming and judging from random strangers... yeah, I do think that women get it pretty bad, especially concern trolling on behalf of the children, and so that is what this post is about.

But, yes, I do think everyone should be trusted in the way I try to describe in this post. :)

[Jake]

Also, the claim that full-term breastfeeding kids don't learn to properly feed themselves is just silly. The caloric needs of a five year old are much much greater than those of a six month old or even one year old baby, and milk production won't keep up. By the time a kid is five, breastfeeding isn't about food anymore, it's about all the other important bonding and attachment things that people have talked about.

[Tonio]

I certainly didn't mean to give reason to believe that I didn't trust men

And I didn't assume that you held that belief, and didn't mean to suggest it, either.

I think that as a culture, we sort of DO trust men quite a bit.

Yes, and you're right that this is the essential problem. I'm simply framing the problem in a different way. Society is saying some individuals should not be trusted by default, based on a personal characteristic, whereas I'm saying that ALL individuals should be trusted by default regardless of personal characteristic. If society followed the principle I'm outlining, we wouldn't have the injustice of women having to prove they can be trusted. Similar to what I've read about the phenomenon of child brides as means to settle debts or disputes between families - one might be tempted to simply liberate the individual girls, but that wouldn't fix the larger problem of those societies being controlled top to bottom by men.

[Rowen]

I know this doesn't count for all people who talk about breastfeeding, but based on the boards that I've visited, there are a lot of people who associate breastfeeding after a certain age with things like unschooling, elimination communication, and parents who do things like take their toddlers to fancy eating establishments or otherwise do all the things that Supernanny disapproves of.

[AnaMardoll]

whereas I'm saying that ALL individuals should be trusted by default regardless of personal characteristic.

Ah. I concur. :)

I think a problem is that a lot of people probably think we already do this, and it takes pointing out individual "no, we don't trust $GENDER in X case," or "no, we don't trust $RACE in Y case," or "no, we don't trust $CLASS in Z case," to make the point.

Case in point: "abusive breastfeeding". Why so much hate on the women and not the men who are -- in at least some of these cases -- part of the picture as well? The ENTIRE ARGUMENT that the "pleasure" of breastfeeding overrides common sense on when to wean *hinges* on there not being another, non-breastfeeding parent/grandparent/caretaker involved in the equation. Or the idea that breastfeeding is abusive because the child can't interact with anyone else in the family at that moment completely ignores any father-child or non-lactating-mother-child activities entirely.

It takes saying, "Wait, so you'll shame a woman for a mother-child activity, but you think Dad-and-Tot trips to the park are fine?" to really point out that, no, we don't trust everyone equally. Unfortunately.

But I concur with your point. :)

[cjmr]

Rowen said: "I know this doesn't count for all people who talk about breastfeeding, but based on the boards that I've visited, there are a lot of people who associate breastfeeding after a certain age with things like unschooling, elimination communication, and parents who do things like take their toddlers to fancy eating establishments or otherwise do all the things that Supernanny disapproves of."

One of these (bolded) things is not like the others...

[Jake]

cjmr, how so? I mean I'm not a parent, but it seems to me that all of these things are things that some parents do, that are not widely accepted as part of Western norms, and that don't really hurt anyone as long as they're done responsibly.

[Mike Timonin]

I didn't say RodeoBob was RIGHT, I merely wished to point out that he was wrong in a way that was different from the way people were responding to.

[Slacktinonymous]

This is more wife shaming than mother shaming, but this 1932 advertisement for soap seemed to fit in this thread. There's just as much woman-shaming in modern advertisements, but the quality of it has changed. An advert like this wouldn't fly today, but most modern advertisements are no less demeaning to women, just in a different way.

[cjmr]

Extended breastfeeding, un-schooling, and elimination communication are generally private matters, mostly done in the home*, and don't involve the general public much at all.

Taking toddlers to fancy eating establishments...not so much. If the child is excessively loud or generally not well-behaved, that is the one instance where another patron of the restaurant DOES have a right to comment. My two older children were the type of children that people didn't mind having at nice restaurants, even when they were tiny. The youngest is NOT. We don't go to fancy eating establishments with her.

----
*Well, for some un-schoolers. Other un-schoolers are out and about all day.

[Ross]

@Slactinonymous: If you think that's bad, you should look at old Lysol ads.

[Mmy]

Ross and Slacktinonymous: hold that that, I feel an open thread coming on.

[AnaMardoll]

Ah, children in restaurants! Always a good thread. :D

Or, dog help us, children in movie theaters. Ask me about the time I went to Tangled on a packed Friday evening showing and the five-year-old child directly behind us kept up a constant running monologue the entire movie without his mother once ever saying a word to him. Good times. :)

It's a... touchy subject. I'm not about to say that children shouldn't be taken out in public, but at the same time, I feel like there's a reasonable boundary issue of "I would like to be able to spend money in a public venue and not be bombarded by constant disruption by another patron." I feel this way regardless of whether the disturbance was caused by a child or by an adult, and I understand that children are very much still learning. I hope that's not parent-blaming. :(

[AnaMardoll]

directly behind us kept up a constant running monologue the entire movie without his mother once ever saying a word to him.

And I should clarify that his mother was the only caretaker with him -- if another adult was there, I would have been more than happy for them to take a moment to educate him on appropriate movie theater behavior.

Also, what was odd was that 90% of his monologue was "what is that? what does that mean? why did he do that? Momma, why is the horse mad?" etc. so it was doubly odd to me that his mother didn't at least answer him. Maybe it was a developmental stage she was trying gamely to weather?

I digress.

[cjmr]

At least Tangled is a kids' movie...

That would be really intolerable in a PG-13 or higher rated movie. (And yes, I've seen 5-year-olds in R movies.)

We don't go to movies in the theater much either. But that's because they are so [expletive deleted] loud now. (Which means that kid was probably talking REALLY loudly, actually.)

[Mmy]

@Ana Mardoll: If you think about it it isn't really about children at all -- it is about people being rude. People talking loudly in the cinema are rude, people who find it necessary to discuss the lives at length on cell phones while sitting in crowded trains are rude, people who park so their car takes up two parking spaces are rude......

Since the woman wasn't answering fairly reasonable questions then I would put her down as a rude person in general. It just happened to be her child she was being rude to (and that rudeness was spilling over on you.)

(my pet peeve in cinemas since I am a notably short person is very tall people who decide to sit in front of me even though 3/4s of the seats in the place are empty.)

[cjmr]

Or even worse, a tall person who is attending a movie with shorter persons, but still positions their group in the row in front of you with the TALLEST person their party in front of the shortest person in your party. When the lights are still up.

[Laiima]

@Ana, Spouse and I took advantage of his vacation day a week ago to see a matinee movie -- not a children's movie. The theater was a lot more filled than we expected -- with senior citizens. We were the youngest people by probably 20 years.

My movie experience was ruined by a couple, sitting kitty corner behind us *2 rows*, who were talking *so loud* to each other during every major scene, that I could not concentrate. (The male lead leans over his dying wife to tenderly say goodbye, and these people are yapping about what it all means, the room decorations, I don't know what all). I finally turned around and glared at them, twice, but they seemed completely oblivious. I mean, old people, I'm sympathetic, but also, I couldn't hear *anyone else* talking.

[Rowen]

Hey guys,

Sorry for dropping that and then disappearing.

What I meant to be getting at is that there this straw man parent who does all these things (spends all their time bargaining with the child, breastfeeds them until they are 12, unschools the kid, goes out to restaurants and then gets upset because Trattoria Del'Soemthing Or Other doesn't have a kids menu, pushes their overly large stroller down the middle of the sidewalk, controls the weather and wrote the screen play for glitter). So, ESPECIALLY online, the moment breastfeeding pops up, it turns into "

[Rowen]

Sorry,
Um, so, yeah, it turns into "I TOTALLY MET THIS ONE MOMMY ONLINE WHO WAS REALLY NASTY ON AN ONLINE FORUM."

Among other sorts of overreactions and misconceptions.

[AnaMardoll]

I hate those parents who control the weather. We haven't had rain down here in forever, and yet it's cloudy and depressing all the time. Sun or rain: pick one, people! :-P

But, yeah. I tend to think that people are doing the best they can and that judging isn't helpful. I mean, even with the kid in the theater -- and really, I've never wanted to flip someone off in person as much as I did this woman because I really liked the movie so I was pretty surly by the end -- I tried to figure that maybe she was just having a REALLY BAD DAY and didn't have the spoons for anything more than taking her kid to the movie he wanted to see or something.

I mean, I've been tired and run down enough before that I can sort of imagine letting a hypothetical kid run off at the mouth for two hours before noticing that it probably ruined a movie for everyone else, so I tried to shrug it off. I definitely don't want to be one of those OMG KIDS THESE DAYS people.

[tw: violence]

Actually, can we talk about THAT? It sets my teeth on edge when anyone complains about kids these days being violent or disrespecting authority. Am I the only person on earth who remembers that there was, like, a teacher in one of the Little House on the Prairie books who had to bring, like, a literal WHIP to school rather than be beat up by the older kids? What book was that in? I need to find that and hand it out on cards to anyone who complains about KIDS THESE DAYS.

[Ruby]

@Ana--Throughout history, the older generation has always said that the younger generation is "the worst ever." I enjoy the juvenile delinquency shorts in MST3K movies, where the adults whine (in the 50's!) that these kids today with their rock music and hot rods and hula hoops are The Worst Ever.

Not, mind you, that history is any excuse for letting kids constantly talk during movies or kick airplane seats or poke their heads under dressing room doors.

[Ruby]

TW: violence

Speaking of schoolchildren in "the good old days" perpetrating violence:

http://www.canton.org/history/barstow1.htm