No! I Don’t WANT to Comment on the Now-Infamous Time Magazine Breastfeeding Cover Story! (But, Okay, I Will)

Note: I will answer the questions posed in the comments section of last week’s Ask the Mean Mom post, but I’ve also been asked by a subscriber and some others what my “take” is on the by-now-infamous Time Magazine cover, here:

"Are You Mom Enough?" Time magazine, them's fightin' words!

I didn’t want to comment, really. Certainly, I didn’t want to comment just on the cover; I wanted to read the article, which I finally did, yesterday.

But first, the cover: I think we can all agree that it’s blatant sensationalism. Everyone sees what they want to see. Some see a proud mother, unashamed to be nursing a four-year-old (and she shouldn’t be ashamed. In fact, I’d argue it’s a crying shame that more women don’t breastfeed their babies at all. Still, Time could just have easily shown a mom with a younger baby nursing in a sling, which to me is a more direct image to say ‘attachment parenting,’ which is what the article’s about). Others see an image that disgusts them or titillates (sorry). All that was what the Time folks hoped; that, and that those who saw the image would scramble to buy a copy.

As a journalist, especially as someone who spent a lot of time in old-school (read: non-digital) magazine offices, helping decide which cover images and coverlines would make the biggest impact on newsstand sales, I could see right through the editors’ efforts, and this was before I read the piece, which as I’ll explain in a bit, is not directly related to the image. And I had my most rueful laugh of the week watching, of all things, Bill Maher’s Real Time last Friday. The comedian and political commentator included a snarky mention of the cover in his “New Rules” bit, in which he regularly skewers politics and popular culture. When he said, of that cover and coverline choice, that “…seriously? The print media has to die more gracefully,” well… yeah. I agree, even though the print media has been my bread and butter for 25 years. (You can view the bit here, at about minute 1:20, but I’ll warn you if you’re not familiar with Maher, it’s not suitable viewing for work or with little ones around!)

So yeah, Bill, Time magazine may be jumping the shark, but they got us, didn’t they?

I didn’t want them to get me. I’m frankly way, way over this discussion of who’s a better or more committed or more “full time” mom (which you know from this recent post about the so-called Mommy Wars is a phrase that gets my particular panties in a bunch). But by now I’ve read the story and I have to say at least this: the photo is a blip in the content of the article, which is a discussion (and a fairly nuanced one, overall) of the work of Dr. William Sears, who popularized attachment parenting with the publication of The Baby Book 20 years ago.

I guess a picture of the 70-something Sears wouldn’t sell copies.

The coverline, “Are you Mom Enough” is, to me, far more aggravating and polarizing than any photo of a nursing mother could ever be. It’s setting readers up – before they get a chance to page through a reasonable journalistic take on the subject of attachment parenting – to take sides.

For the record, attachment parenting was not for me. I don’t believe that babies who are fed on demand and worn on a parent’s body 24/7 and not allowed a moment of distress are better off than children who, like my boys, were fed my milk but on a schedule, who were cuddled a lot but who slept in their cribs and were toted around in strollers, not slings. It’s my belief that anyone’s babies are better off when they’re loved, and when the style of parenting adopted feels right to their parents. Was I, am I, attached to my boys? Of course I am. Do they feel attached to me? Of course they do.

On Time.com, there’s even a quiz to help you work out if you’re an attachment parent, but all the questions are yes or no, which makes it seem as though we all have a choice between baby-sling-wearing virtue, and Betty Draper detachment.

You tell me: what facet of parenting is ever yes or no, black or white?

Here’s one thing I did not know, until I read that article, and props to the writer, Kate Pickert, who as I said did a pretty balanced job: both Dr. William Sears and his wife, Martha, admit that they developed their attachment style of parenting as a reaction against poor parenting they’d either experienced or witnessed. Martha Sears tells a sad story of a baby in her family who was left to cry dejectedly in her crib for hours, without attention or love. Out of that is born a desire to never let a baby cry? Or to view any version of sleep training that involves “crying it out” to be abusive? I don’t see that. Again, nothing’s quite that black and white.

Pickert also wonders what Dr. Sears really thinks about working mothers. In the past, apparently, he’s been clearly against mothers leaving their children at all. He claims he doesn’t believe that any longer. And yet we find out that he financially subsidized his sons and daughters-in-law, so that the women could afford to stay home.

(If my father in law, admittedly a generous man, had made that offer? After I peeled myself off the floor and sniffed his Scotch glass to be sure no one had accidentally slipped him something psychedelic, I’d have said no thanks. And not because I didn’t wish I could have nursed instead of pumping milk in a chilly conference room, but because I wouldn’t have given up working even so, because working is who I am, which is part of the kind of mother I am.)

See? No clear answers, no yes-or-no, no black and white.

What do you think?