As always, there is another Breastfeeding debate/controversy going around in the news this week. Time Magazine has published a cover of a mother sanding up, breastfeeding her almost 4-year-old son. And if that image in your head isn’t shocking enough for you, her son is standing on a stool so he can reach.

Good Job, Time Magazine. You get an A+ for selling magazines this week. Anything it takes to get the dollars in, right? For a second there I thought you were the Enquirer, but, oh, wait, the article was actually a well written piece on the issue of breastfeeding and attachment parenting. Too bad the message is getting lost in the hail of outrage from the public at large on both sides of the issue. The people who think breastfeeding should be done but not seen, or not done at all hate you, and now breastfeeding mothers and attachment parenting families hate you too. Good Job.

And while I understand that you’re in business to make money, (from what I can tell your magazine isn’t really that popular, you probably need that extra boost in sales this week to stay afloat) I really wish you would have perhaps chosen a less inflammatory picture to use on the cover. By all means, show a mother breastfeeding her pre-school age son, but perhaps show it in a more realistic light, say, her sitting in a comfy chair cradling her son in her arms, like most kids breastfeed? Oh, I understand that you think it may not have sold as many copies and generated as much press as you’re now getting, but maybe, just maybe you would have helped bring the important issue of breastfeeding to your audience in a more responsible way. It’s also sad that you had any number of other perfectly suitable pictures that you took for the cover that would have been less controversial, but few people will actually take the time to look at those ones.

I could throw out a bunch of shame-on-you’s in order to keep making my point here, as my husband will tell you I’m especially fond of the finger-waggle, but I won’t because you’re not really reading this post anyways.

What I will say is that while the article was an interesting and informative read for me, a breastfeeding mother who is in the middle of my own debate on how long I’m going to continue to breastfeed my, now, 1-year-old child, you’ve just thrown the debate to the wolves and left mother’s like me to fend for ourselves.

Good job.

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