Also, the other article (The Case Against Breastfeeding) is odd too. I suspect that she didn't pick that title - I think she's much more balanced than that, but at the same time she seems to have had the experience that if you don't breastfeed you're ostrasized as a mother. After I stopped breastfeeding Jamie at 6 months, I got just as many comments on my feeding him as I did before - pretty much none.
THis paragraph caught my eye: Even in the best of marriages, the domestic burden shifts, in incremental, mostly unacknowledged ways, onto the woman. Breast-feeding plays a central role in the shift. In my set, no husband tells his wife that it is her womanly duty to stay home and nurse the child. Instead, both parents together weigh the evidence and then make a rational, informed decision that she should do so. Then other, logical decisions follow: she alone fed the child, so she naturally knows better how to comfort the child, so she is the better judge to pick a school for the child and the better nurse when the child is sick, and so on. because I hear this stuff all the time. In our house, in the first few weeks, Adrian did everything else because I was breastfeeding. That's how we split the job. H's still better at getting Jamie to sleep, and slightly better at calming him (possibly because he's better at staying calm himself). If nothing else I would LOVE to stop this husband bashing that seems ubiquitous. I see it all the time and every single time I want to jump up and say "not MY husband".
no subject
THis paragraph caught my eye:
Even in the best of marriages, the domestic burden shifts, in incremental, mostly unacknowledged ways, onto the woman. Breast-feeding plays a central role in the shift. In my set, no husband tells his wife that it is her womanly duty to stay home and nurse the child. Instead, both parents together weigh the evidence and then make a rational, informed decision that she should do so. Then other, logical decisions follow: she alone fed the child, so she naturally knows better how to comfort the child, so she is the better judge to pick a school for the child and the better nurse when the child is sick, and so on.
because I hear this stuff all the time. In our house, in the first few weeks, Adrian did everything else because I was breastfeeding. That's how we split the job. H's still better at getting Jamie to sleep, and slightly better at calming him (possibly because he's better at staying calm himself). If nothing else I would LOVE to stop this husband bashing that seems ubiquitous. I see it all the time and every single time I want to jump up and say "not MY husband".
Sorry. I'll stop ranting now. ;-)