Breastfeeding mom's picture sparks debate

Shocking or no big deal? A woman breastfeeding her 3-year-old son is the cover photo of this week’s Time magazine for a story on “attachment parenting”, and reactions ranged from applause to cringing to shrugs.

The photo showed Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, a stay-at-home mom who says her mother breastfed her until she was 6 years old. She told the magazine she’s given up reasoning with strangers who see her son nursing and threaten “to call social services on me or that it’s child molestation.”
“People have to realise this is biologically normal,” she said, adding, “the more people see it, the more it’ll become normal in our culture. That’s what I’m hoping. I want people to see it.”
Some questioned why the magazine used the photo of Grumet to illustrate a story about a style of childrearing that’s been around for a generation. The issue includes a profile of the attachment parenting guru Dr Bill Sears, who wrote one of the movement’s bibles, “The Baby Book”.
On Twitter, the cover inspired X-rated jokes along with concerns that the child might be teased when he’s older. But on message boards, there was debate about whether it’s OK to breastfeed beyond babyhood.