NASCAR Driver Kasey Kahne Bashes Moms Who Breastfeed In Public

Heheh...the trick is to keep one's head above the hollerin' and flak that controversy raises, ain't it!

As more background...my wife chose to breastfeed every one of our six kids (our oldest is now twenty-eight, to give some time-frame). Except for our first baby, she breastfed each child for at least two years, for a total of thirteen years of breastfeeding. What I know about breastfeeding I learned directly or indirectly as a result of her choice and my willing, full support of her choice. She was, incidentally, painstakingly discreet in how she breastfed.

You compared public breastfeeding to farm animal suckling. If by your comparison you imply that being like farmyard animals’ behavior makes something an undesirable or unacceptable behavior, that's not necessarily true. As adults, we do act like farmyard animals in another way that is socially acceptable: we, like animals, eat publicly. We have no more problem seeing adults eating publicly than we do seeing farm animals eating publicly. Sure, a few people feel uncomfortable eating in front of others, and we disagree about specifics of table and mastication etiquette, but I’m aware of no one throughout my fifty-five years ever expressing they felt public eating was unacceptable even though it is like the behavior of farmyard animals. Public breastfeeding being the same as “acting like farmyard animals suckling” doesn’t necessarily make public breastfeeding an unacceptable behavior, does it?

Until after 1900, breastfeeding by the mother or a wet nurse was the universal practice. Do you believe that , prior to 1900 (which is granting an earlier date since more nearly correct would be “prior to the early-1900's”), US public breastfeeding typically elicited that discomfort you mention or outright negative feelings such as Kahne twittered (“nasty”)? I find no evidence that it did. Until breastfeeding in the US fell into disfavor and neglect, public breastfeeding was a familiar practice, so people throughout history typically had positive or neutral reactions to seeing it. Something relatively recently changed US attitudes about breastfeeding to that discomfort you and others feel and to that outright disgust expressed by a few.

I believe US attitude was changed by two substantial influences..

The first and more significant was the over-confident scientific sector's successful propaganda that man-made products such as formula were superior to breast milk, a gross error from which US society (among other societies) is only recently recovering. The early-to-mid-1900's' “better-living-through-chemistry” mantra twisted the reality of “SOME things made better by science” into the presumptious assertion of “ALL things made better by science” in a way exploited by manufacturers, particularly pharmaceuticals, and by the medical business. Suddenly, women were being pressured and straight-out told NOT to breastfeed and that, indeed, they jeopardized their babies' chances for optimal health unless they bottlefed with "superior" man-made products. Human nature being as it is, this was an understandably welcomed revelation: for, after all, if formula was better, then, hey, it meant parents, particularly mothers, had a valid reason for avoiding the inconveniences of breastfeeding, especially if mothers sought to be employed in the workforce. Based on what we now realize is an erroneous premise, mothers logically followed the path of (apparent) least effort and bottlefed. Within a generation or two, breastfeeding became suspect and disfavored. After most mothers quit breastfeeding, it eventually became an unfamiliar practice not only publicly but privately.

The second influence on attitudes, and what exacerbated the effects of the first influence, is oversimplistically described but nevertheless pointedly represented by one magazine title: Playboy. Erotica has always existed, of course (and by the way, I have zero objection to erotica as long as it involves only consenting adults). But, with the advent of Playboy, erotica became more mainstream, and more widely and commonly available. Due, in part, to what was being tolerated in newstand magazine photography to that time, Playboy's initial focus on women’s breasts deeply influenced men (including teens), and indirectly women, with the message, "Breasts are all about sex." Not only mainstream erotica promoted that message, of course. The print, movie, and now TV media generally were effectively indoctrinating the US with that misconception.

So, two strands operated to change the public’s attitudes about breastfeeding – the first strand, misinformation which said breatfeeding was “wrong” for babies and finally made breastfeeding an unfamiliar practice in the US, essentially erasing the primary purpose of breasts from the US mind; and the second strand, media which mass-marketingly defined breasts as being solely for the purpose of sex. The consequence? The US, having lost the historical perspective of breasts being primarily maternal, began seeing breasts as exclusively sexual,

“Unfamiliar” things make us uncomfortable, don’t they, Old Ogre? It’s predictable that any person who’s unfamiliar with seeing breasts feeding babies will react with discomfort due to unfamiliarity. But the attitude you and others feel isn’t historically natural nor typical, Old Ogre – it’s relatively recent and it’s artificial, induced by misguidance and encouraged by business interests. US attitude toward breastfeeding deteriorated to discomfort and outright negativity when breastfeeding became unfamiliar and breasts were redefined to be exclusively sexual. That discomfort you feel is the reprogramming foisted by medical/scientific fallacies and opportunistic merchandisers.

Being an artificial, abnormal reaction to public breastfeeding, negativity and discomfort are irrational, unreasonable, inappropriate, and unjustified. The reaction seems akin to the discomfort expressed by some misinformed Fundamentalists when told, “Our Founding Fathers were not Bible-literalistic Christians.” It's a discomfort-due-to-unfamiliarity probably similar to what a repressed adult from Victorian London would feel seeing the fashions and hemlines nonchalantly worn by even church-going US women today. I believe it's similar to having discomfort or disgust when, say, blacks were initially allowed to use the same public facilities as whites, or when women were allowed into the military situations they routinely serve in today. Sure, those “novelties” felt strange. But, feelings can be deceptive – just because those changes felt wrong did not mean they were wrong. The need was to “get over it”. So, I encourage this: ask yourself why it bothers you, ask yourself if there’re legitimate reasons for your feelings, and begin to modify your feelings.

I do not side with any woman deliberately flaunting her breasts as she breastfeeds. Casual, accidental, or passive exposure of her breasts as she nurses is understandable and often unavoidable, but to deliberately expose her breasts simply as a political statement or as a “you-have-no-right-to-tell-me-what-to-do” or with complete disregard for others’ feelings only serves to make others defensive and resistant. Regrettably, during periods of social changes, extremist, militant behavior inevitably occurs. The majority of women I know or have known who publicly breastfeed, however, not only exercise practical discretion (often conscientiously more than what I feel should be necessary) but also condemn the behavior of the few extremists.

Regarding your “any good reason to need to breastfeed in public” question...granting that “good” is in the eye of the beholder, here’s at least one of those good reasons: A hungry baby’s screaming is usually disconcerting in public (a baby's cry apparently a mechanism to deliberately disconcert adults in order to ensure a helpless baby's needs are noticed and met). Consequent to breastfeeding falling into disfavor and disuse, few retail businesses or public places designate areas for breastfeeding. A nursing mother’s alternatives are usually problematic -– say, exiting the store and walking across the crowded Walmart lot in an evening’s winter rain to nurse in her car. Forcing, say, my wife, one of my daughters, or my daughter-in-law, to endure that because someone is irrationally uncomfortable glimpsing a breast feeding a baby in a grocery store definitely ranks as “bad” to me.

Breast-pumping, unfortunately, isn't the panacea you might expect. Not all women can successfully pump, and some, for whom the inexpensive pumps are ineffective, would require what for them is an unaffordable high-end electric breast pump -- I know this from women who wanted to use breast pumping and ended up frustrated when they couldn't. But more important, supplementing or mixing bottlefeeding (including bottlefeeding of breastmilk) with breastfeeding can easily cause various difficulties for the mother and for the baby, interfering with and sometimes preventing effective breastfeeding -- for examples, a baby accustomed to the breast often balks at bottles and synthetic nipples; and some babies will refuse the breast after being introduced to bottlefeeding.

Hey, I do like what you’ve done with your signature. I expect it’ll get a few mental gears engaged. I don’t always agree with Jefferson, but I respect his thinking most of all the Founders’, and I’m confident he’d have agreed with the sentiment expressed by that quote.

Simple: counter-argument: mothers will frequently provide their babies bottles while walking around the grocery store. This quiets the baby and allows his/her mother to complete their family's shopping trip. For mothers who are nursing, feeding a crying baby is often not an option because of the flak they tend to get. To stop and then feed a baby in a dirty public restroom stall, which is typically the only private place in a grocery store, is an absurd requirement. Would you eat your lunch in the same place where you urinate or defecate? If not, then why require nursing babies to do the same thing? My wife used to use a baby blanket or her jacket to prevent her breast from being exposed, but it was still obvious what she was doing when she was nursing one of our children.

Given the health benefits of nursing, I would thing doing everything we can to encourage and to support breastfeeding would be in the public interest.

This is not some political issue du jour. This is about freedom and liberty. Freedom means you don't have to agree with what someone is doing, but unless it affects you directly, you need to mind your own damn business. Obviously, people should stop staring at other women's breasts when they are feeding their children.

Really... "pushing back?" How about butting out and moving on?

Hmmm...I'll offer replies to your points one at a time. But a question, first, in regard to your, "Why don’t we just get rid of all the signs on the restroom doors that say “men” or “women” it’s just a natural bodily function, nothing wrong with it, EVERYONE POOPS after all and no denying that one!"

Do you feel, then, that a baby feeding is in the same category as an adult defecating, Old Ogre?