Dear breastfeeding boy on the cover of TIME,
I am sorry.
I am sorry a well-known and once respected magazine took advantage of you. Instead of helping the cause of breastfeeding by showing a loving mother engaged in "extended breastfeeding" and "attachment parenting" you were placed on a stool under the lights in order to sell magazines. While your mother adjusted her tank top, and editors came up with the inflammatory title, "Are you Mom enough?"
I am sorry your mother did not think about your future self when she was putting on her skinny jeans.
Yes, you are almost four - old to be breastfeeding, but still so young. Not old enough to know this picture will never go away. Ever. You cannot tear it up, burn it or feed it to your dog. It cannot be tucked privately into your family photos and placed on your shelf.
I am sorry we are all talking about you, writing about you, forwarding pictures of you.
I am sorry adults consider their children's lives to be their own material. And they do not realize how dangerous our world really is. People forget, or do not know, how pedophiles take things out of context and use them for their own twisted gain. How there are no boundaries and everything is fair game. I am sorry you will never know the world that I grew up in: before Facebook, iPhones and the Internet.
Maybe there are men out there who wish they had a similar photo of their younger selves with their mothers. If this is so, I hope you end up being one of them.
I really do.
This is my latest BabyCenter Blog post. Just wanted to share, Dr. Laura.
May
