On August 1, World Breastfeeding Week began and that makes breastfeeding a topical issue and that it is talked about more than usual.
Among the people who have wanted to talk about breastfeeding include Adriana Abenia, who we talked about a few days ago and Gloria Hurtado, psychologist and collaborator of the newspaper El País for years, which in a recent opinion article said, among other things that we will now comment , that the woman must balance the attention between her son and her husband and that breastfeeding the child is an obstacle to it.
I do not say that this psychologist is wrong, because she is giving us her opinion about breastfeeding and relationships within the family (which you can read here), but my opinion is contrary to his, I see it differently and therefore, From my position as husband and man, I will talk about your words after each paragraph of your article.
Will pediatricians understand that who breastfeeds a child is not a 'milk dispenser'? Can they accept that the woman-mother does not stop being human when she gives birth to a child? If they have ridden by plane they have heard, when the example of the mask that falls with depressurization is given, that I cannot give air to anyone while I drown. Also I can not give milk to anyone while I consume anguish.
This is just an introduction, so I don't have much to say. If anything, as a sanitary and as a man and father, I would worry about knowing why a woman who breastfeeds consumes anguish, why is he drowning.
The prolactance campaign is very important, no more missing, but you can not 'invisible' the mother woman to put her 'at the service' of your child, or ignore the psychological world where the dependence of a child through breastfeeding until Two years can cause unsuspected problems. We are not just 'biological body': the psychological factors of attachment and manipulation of children are of such proportion that one cannot fall into the extreme of privileging the body 'razing' with the rest.
Invisibilize the mother woman to put her at the service of her son? My mother, if breastfeeding is something as or more magical than gestating a baby! These are opinions, of course, what it is for you to enslave a mother in the service of a baby for me it is to demonstrate the wonderful power that a woman and mother can have, which a man will never have, to nourish and strengthen his son's body.
With regard to demand or manipulation, it is doubtful professional to speak of manipulation in babies up to two years of age. A baby asks for what he needs at all times for proper development. Then parents can decide to pay attention to it or not, meet their demands and needs or start showing that all their requirements cannot be met.
You from psychology seem to recommend that this limitation be initiated almost from birth, I think it is better to wait for the child to develop a minimum of his own personality, because if we drown a baby from the beginning, he will hardly be able to make our own decisions.
Yes, the mother's feeding to her child is necessary, her emotional bond is important, but there are other valuable factors that must be included to achieve balance.
There are several valuable factors that must be included in the relationship with the child to achieve balance, but the mother's feeding to her child is necessary and her emotional bond is important. I have said the same thing but turning the phrase around and as I say it seems that it acquires another meaning.
Have you ever heard the pain of that mother woman when she says that her husband is no longer looking for her because she 'smells like milk'? For that little boy the most important thing will be to 'have been fed by mom' paying the price for his parents to distance themselves? Have your guilt worked because you must go to work and your child's pediatrician scolds her because she does not breastfeed enough? Or do you stay at home for food and to 'flow' economic problems?
I had never heard the pain of a man rejecting his wife because he smells like milk and, if one day a friend told me something similar ("I have not approached my wife because it smells like milk"), I would say (with the trust of a friend), that He's dumb, what little scruples and that he's a little less than fatal. The problem in this case is of the man, not of the mother, much less of the baby (damn baby who drinks milk from his mother, milk that throws back the manly of his father).
With respect to pediatricians who scold women for not giving enough breast, because mothers start working, again, are the mothers who have to stop breastfeeding so that the pediatricians do not bother them or are the pediatricians Those who are not able to understand that there are women who work?
The problem here is that a pediatrician can commit the imprudence of telling a mother that "as you have gone to work your baby is at risk of becoming ill or at risk of malnutrition." Personally I have not heard any pediatrician say such nonsense and, if he did, he would censor his words.
The fault lies with the system, which is not designed so that mothers and children can live together the necessary time for babies to breastfeed the minimum recommended, never of mothers, much less of babies.
Having a child cannot become a bondage where patriarchal culture 'forces' her to forget herself so that her child 'uses' her whenever she wants.
Again the fault lies with the baby who uses his mother for his own benefit? I think the problem, Mrs. Gloria Hurtado, is yours. His conception of breastfeeding is quite unidirectional. For you it is an act in which the only beneficiary is the baby, being something that also harms the mother, enslaving her and defeating her psychologically. It is possible that there are women who experience breastfeeding in this way and in this case the problem should be worked on, but not to criticize breastfeeding per se.
I imagine that when you meet a couple whose relationship is dysfunctional, one in which one takes advantage of the other and the other feels distressed, works so that this does not happen or so that the couple, if necessary, break up. The illogical thing would be that, as a result of that couple (or those couples) you would say that it is a mistake for women to have a partner, because they make them feel inferior.
Imposed breastfeeding is, psychologically, one of the factors that causes the most rejection because maternity is once again the chain with which the female world is 'stopped'. A son cannot 'kidnap' his mother through breastfeeding!
And I thought that women's breasts served to breastfeed babies and that they were part of a woman's femininity ... now it turns out that making use of them is moving away from the feminine world. Now it turns out that breastfeeding is being kidnapped by a baby that takes you away from the outside world and introduces you to the hateful home world of being a mother and caring for a baby ... with how easy it is to give birth and let your child feed them others and take care of others. We will have to ask for more nursery places to governments so that neither mothers nor fathers (that my children also kidnap me a lot of times, hey) have to spend time with their children.
Balance and not guilt. Balance and do not tie up. Listening to her in her anxiety, in her fear, in her joy, in her pain, may not be the work of the Pediatrician and yes of Psychology, but what this woman mother experiences cannot be ignored.
Listening to a mother is everyone's job, the problem is that nowadays almost nobody listens and everyone talks. Then the equation ends up being the other way around: the mother ends up listening to everyone and swallowing the opinions of those who should not and when she speaks, nobody listens to her.
Freedom of choice generates responsibility and healthy commitments where guilt (and rage) do not end up wreaking havoc. And what is the male participation in this walk? Of course, the woman mother is between her son and her husband and if the medium does not help her, she must balance the attention between her 'two loves'. Do pediatrician gentlemen know what I am talking about? Are they able to 'tune in' with female anguish? Or for you the only important thing is the child 'at any price'. More than one woman says that before the pediatrician she feels before a father who judges and scolds her.
The woman must balance what? The moment a baby is born, the father, one of the "two loves" of a mother, must understand whether or not the baby requires much more attention than he does. In fact, even the mother must understand that the father will often choose to be with her baby rather than her.
It is pure and hard logic, it comes home, where there were two autonomous and independent people, although united, a person totally dependent on them. If a father asks for the same attention as the baby, if he asks for balance, he has not understood anything. If you, Gloria, a psychologist, have not understood this either ...
With regard to pediatricians, again, the problem is of those pediatricians who treat mothers and women as useless girls unable to raise their children. Raise your voice against them, please, the mothers raise their voices against all those people who childish them And raise your voice those parents who are treated as stallions without neurons who only think about satisfying their hanging brain.
Does that attitude help breastfeeding? How unfair and patriarchal the prolactance campaign sounds to me without considering the woman, her desire, her need, her illusion and her own life.
Every woman is free to decide what to do and nobody, absolutely no one should criticize a woman for deciding to breastfeed or for deciding not to. That said, patriarchal seems to want a woman not to play her role as a mother to put herself at the service of "her love" the father. Patriarchal seems to me to want a woman not to attend to her son to put herself at the service of the “feminine world”, which apparently is that in which she puts herself at the service of capitalism, working, producing and consuming, because of course, being a mother Doesn't seem to score points in society, right?
If it is thought that a son is the king of the house and that everything revolves around him, do we not encourage the culture of children and adolescents 'matched' where their parents and the world 'owe them' because they always satisfied all their wishes? Not only do we 'feed' on breast milk. Also the mood, attitude and respect for the woman-mother, become healthy vitamins for integral growth.
Do we talk about babies who come to the world prepared to receive breast milk (they are born immature and breastfeeding continues to perform the functions carried out by the placenta inside the belly) or do we talk about capricious teenagers? Because here they are mixing churras with merines. It is not the same to feed and raise a baby than to educate a child of several years. Breastfeeding a baby will not make you believe that everything revolves around him, if that were the case, the world would be full, now and for the centuries of the preceding centuries and for the coming ones, of rude and narcissistic adults.
Everything in its time, Mrs. Gloria. To babies, mother's milk, millions of kisses, hugs, many arms and unlimited affection, to those who are not so babies, millions of kisses, hugs, unlimited affection, much dialogue and sufficient and necessary education to be free people, Happy, humble and respectful.
Photos | Photomontage with image of c r z on Flickr and photo of Gloria H. in El País, c r z on Flickr
In Babies and more | About neomachismo and parenting with attachment, Mother's Day: being a mother is the best job in the world, We are no longer a couple, now we are a family
