Have you ever walked on the road or a mall and realized you just saw a woman breast feeding in public? Does that make you feel uncomfortable, shameful and wonder, ‘why is the new mother doing this in public?’ If yes, did you ever give a thought of how important is that feed for a hungry baby?
Did you ever really think about it? Most of us don’t really find it worth thinking. All we know is we don’t like seeing this ‘personal act ‘ in public.
Another reason is that for long, breasts have been sexualized. From advertisments to cartoons to reel life breasts have always caught the fancy of Indian men.
Personally, we believe there is nothing unusual and sexy about the breast but they sure do get much attention. They are beautiful but the obsession with them is totally wrong, ask a girl traveling in a metro or a mother feeding her little one.
Further, if men can walk bare shirt, why is there a problem when a women is feeding her baby and somebody gets to see her? What is so awkward about it?
Breasts are a need for a child’s food mechanism. So why are we ashamed of feeding and propagating the human race? And when nudity is promoted so much, then what bothers us when it comes to breast feeding in public? Breastfeeding, is a significant part of every human’s life in the early age, is something that people think you are not supposed to do in public. And so, most of the women are ashamed of feeding their baby publicly!
But at times you are out with your newborn, and he/she needs food, and the only thing you can serve your child with is breast milk. So, we must not think of it differently. Like David Allen rightly said- ‘My opinion is that anybody offended by breastfeeding is staring too hard’, I wish all of us really believed it!
When a mother feeds her baby, she isn’t ashamed of showing her body to her child. If our society would have not taught us that breasts should be viewed nothing else but as just a sexual body part, things would have been different now and breastfeeding would not have been something a woman would be shy of!
If we see a woman feeding her child openly at public places, we will stare at that women so awfully, that she feels embarrassed, Won’t we? And we say we are living in a modern society…Are we really modern?
Think about it…
The only thing that makes us modern is our clothes and not our thinking. We don’t fail to show off how mature we are, but we fail to be that in real!
We must realize that breastfeeding is not only a child’s need but his/her right and nothing is so awful about breastfeeding your child in public! People really need to understand that we can either have a wailing baby and an angry mother or a soothed child and a nursing mother in public. What’s your pick?
