Tag Archives: New York Post

arts and culture, Civics and Urban Life

Dear Listen: Should We Be Breastfeeding 7-Year-Olds?

1 Comment

DEAR LISTEN:

I just read in the New York Post today that the production company behind “Dance Moms” and “American Stuffers,” is developing a reality series based on mothers who breastfeed older children. The Post article included a picture of a Park Slope mom breastfeeding a 3-year-old. What do you think of this phenomena?

Thanks,

Should We Be Breastfeeding 7-year-olds?

DEAR SHOULD WE BE:

Years ago, I remember reading about Viva, one of Andy Warhol’s Superstars (and member of the Factory) in the Village Voice. She said she’d breastfed her son until he could ask for it himself, “Hey mom, give me some tit!”

I remember thinking: that is just so weird. That was, of course, before I had my own children in Park Slope in the 1990’s when attachment parenting was all the rage.

Time’s front cover photo of a toddler boy standing on a chair drinking from his mother’s breast has caused a torrent of opinionating and hyperventilating. I think it’s pretty rare for 7-year-olds to be breastfed.

That said, when is enough enough?

That’s a damn good question. Oh yeah, that’s the one you asked me.

For health and nurturing, breast feeding is the best thing ever during the first couple of years of a baby’s life. It’s fairly easy to do if you’re staying home with the infant. It’s not so easy if you have to go to work. Office pumping is a bit of a nusiance but it is doable if you have a private place to do it at your work place. I was lucky to have an office to myself and I’d just shut the door, put up a sign “pumping in progress” and my co-workers would leave me alone.

But I was lucky to work for a great company at the time. Sad to say, that company is no longer around.

I believe that parenthood is a slow, gradual process of letting go and creating an independent creature that can survive and thrive away from you. That said, a cozy, loving, attentive beginning is fundamental to create a strong, healthy human being.

So, when is enough enough?

Damn it, I don’t know. I think it’s an intuitive thing. My children seemed to lose interest at a certain point. They were each different. If the mom isn’t enjoying it anymore, it’s probably a good time to stop. If the child can ask for it like Viva’s kid and even be spoiled about it I think he or she has had enough. I don’t think you’re doing your kids any favors by prolonging what is essentially an important mother-infant bonding into later childhood.

But hey, I’m not one to legislate what others do. I didn’t breast feed past the age of two but that’s just me.

Sincerely,

She Who Listens

Note: Dear Listen is OTBKB’s new advice column. Send your questions about anything to dearlisten@gmail.com

 

arts and culture

Nora Ephron: She Was So Many Things. And So Are We.

What a nice room. Look at that nice, white sofa.

Many of the women I know were stunned by the death of Nora Ephron earlier this  week at the age of 71. Their status reports on Facebook reflect this. Their columns, their blog posts, and emails.

Talking to my mother, in the midst of a longer conversation she exclaimed, “Oh, and Nora Ephron.” And in a phone call with another woman friend this morning I heard this non-sequitur. “And I’m  so upset about Nora Ephron.”

I think the reason she touched so many of us is because she was so many things. And so are we.

We could admire and aspire to her talent and celebrity, as she was surely one of the most successful female movie directors and screenwriters in Hollwood with films like Heartburn, Silkwood, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, Bewitched and You’ve Got Mail on her IMDB page.

We could revel in her wit and wisdom as she was a comic essayist of enormous gifts, a novelist, a blogger, and frequent contributor to the New Yorker, the  New York Times and other magazines.

She made us laugh time and time again.

We could relate to her personal life, which seemed sophisticated and messy and real. She was a mother and a wife (three times over) and also, reputedly, a great cook and a tasteful homemaker. As a daughter and a sister, we had the sense that she  struggled like the rest of us to navigate the tangle (and the treasure) of those familial relationships.

We also sensed that she understood the power and complexity of female friendship. She said as much in her book of essays, I Feel Bad About My Neck: “My friend Judy died last year. She was the person I told everything to. She was my best friend, my extra sister, my true mother, sometimes even my daughter, she was all these things.”

We could relate to her (and envy her) as the quintessential New Yorker born and bred in Manhattan, who at one time occupied an enormous rent controlled apartment in the Apthorp. You half expected to run into her at Zabar’s shopping for smoked salmon or at Laytners shopping for high thread count sheets. And when she moved to the Upper East Side, you could imagine her lunching at Eat or browsing turtleneck sweaters at Agnes B (she didn’t much like her neck but she had a great sense of style).

Those of us north of fifty could relate to her as she grappled with the indignities of age and openly laughed at the ways we obsess over the crow’s feet and neck jangle we can’t bear to see.

Continue reading Nora Ephron: She Was So Many Things. And So Are We. →