Criticism has been running rampant regarding a recent magazine cover for Time that portrays a woman breast-feeding her three-year-old son. The woman on the cover is 26-year-old Jamie Lynne Grumet from Los Angeles. She appeared on the Today show on NBC this week to discuss the picture and all of the criticism that has come with it.
“We knew exactly what we were going to get into,” Grumet says. “I do understand why Time chose this picture because … it did create such a media craze to get the dialogue talking.”
Grumet’s son’s name is Aron and she plans to continue breast-feeding him until he weans himself. Grumet said that she hopes that when he is four, it will be the final year he breast-feeds.
“It’s a big commitment and its not right for everybody,” she says. “You need to do what is best for your baby and for your own family.”
Social media sites have been exploding about the cover and celebrities across the country are also offering their thoughts, especially Alyssa Milano. The criticism is focused on the graphic nature of the photo and the idea that the child in the photo might be too old to still be breast-feeding. Milano tweeted that the cover ‘is exploitive and extreme.’
“You missed the mark,” Milano tweeted. “You’re supposed to be making it easier for breastfeeding moms.”
Joani Geltman, an expert on parenting, said that she is not surprised people are unhappy with the photo on the cover of the magazine.
“People have an issue with nursing in public anyway, even with an infant. Here they add a 3-year-old child when most children are weaned between 6 months and a year,” Geltman said. “People are up in arms simply because it depicts such an intimate act between a mother and child.”
The story related to the cover is about ‘attachment parenting.’ This is a trend that the Times claims has increased over the past 20 years or so. Times says that attachment parenting involves co-sleeping, ‘baby wearing,’ and extended length of breast-feeding. ‘Baby wearing’ is when infants are attached to their parent by a sling.
“To me, the whole point of a magazine cover is to get your attention,” Rick Stengel, the managing editor of Time, said in an interview with Forbes. “From the moment that we started talking about this story as a cover possibility, it was like I couldn’t get out of the meetings. There was so much opinion and passion about it and discussion. What that told me is, boy, this is a story that people care a lot about. I would hope they wouldn’t cover it up in any way. It’s certainly a possibility.”