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When To Stop Breast Feeding

Supposing, though the mother is obviously not playing with a full deck, this is reallly an over-abundance of mother love. I was reminded, earlier today, of the picture on page 28 of the Fortean Times, issue 162. The one of the little monkey looking lost and cuddling a puppy. Perhaps this woman really does deserve our pity, rather than condemnation.

One of the problems is that we've turned breasts into commodoties and fetish objects. I doubt if many men have the foggiest notion of how a woman actually experiences them. What's worse is that, nowadays, many women feel the need to have them mutilated and have plastic bags inserted, turning them into things the size and shape of cantaloupe melons. Very far away from natural form and function, indeed.

Women probably experience their sensuality and sexuality in a totally different and more diffusely distributed way than men. Men have a totally different experience of sex/sensuality and body image. For them, everything is focussed into one tiny area. There's plenty of evidence that most men and women totally fail to understand the experience and needs of their opposite sex.

Beyond that I do not have enough information to comment.
 
When I read the story I didn't think about the criminality or otherwise of the mother's actions, my initial reaction was that it was very odd for an 8 year old to be still suckling.

As for breastfeeding in public, most people who say they object to it do, I'm sure, have a mental image of a woman revealing a bare breast in front of all and sundry when in fact it's nearly always very discreetly done and all you can see is the baby feeding.

Carole
 
As for breastfeeding in public, most people who say they object to it do, I'm sure, have a mental image of a woman revealing a bare breast in front of all and sundry when in fact it's nearly always very discreetly done and all you can see is the baby feeding.
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Unfortunately, that reminds me of a terrible old Irish joke:

"Excuse me, Mrs Murphy, but I'm afraid your clothes are in a state of disarray."

Mrs Murphy looks down at bare breast, "Oh My God! I've left the baby on the bus!"
 
People from the UK usually make jokes about how the Irish are stupid or gullible. Having spent years living in Ireland I dont see why this is the case.
 
Evolved said:
People from the UK usually make jokes about how the Irish are stupid or gullible. Having spent years living in Ireland I dont see why this is the case.
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I had no idea you were so politically correct E. :) Where did you live in Ireland?
 
Northern Ireland, Belfast to be exact.
Kinda miss it but dont miss all the troubles.
 
ghost dog said:
A friend of mine, and irish lad from...Limerick, says that everyone in Ireland tells 'Kerry' jokes. Like how do you recognise a Kerry mechanic, he's under a wheelbarrow' that type of thing.
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might still be difficult for you though.
Sometimes the real thing looks a lot different than the one you're used to plaling with in your sand-pit.

And beaky, as you well know 'politically correct' is used usually to describe terms which go beyond common-sense. Avoiding racist stereotypes is hardly that.
....
[Personal insult deleted by Mod.]
 
and speaking of gullible and stupid, is our leader, who trust to represent us and act in our interest, still poodling after Bush?
 
Unfortunate, terrible old Irish joke

If I have offended anybody, by posting an `Irish' joke, I apologise. I do not believe the Irish are in any way the intellectual inferiors of any other racial, or national group. Having read a fair bit of the work of Flann O'Brien, and James Joyce, I personally believe they had a much more developed and sharper wit than any of their British contemporaries.

A cursory glance shows that this joke is probably, at least pre-war. I believe that originally it was not a bus, but a tram that was referred to in the punchline.

The joke comes from a more sexually innocent period, where breastfeeding was the norm, particularily for the poor. I have heard and seen, contemporary breast feeding jokes, they always seem to contain some level of sexual innuendo.

I still like the joke. However, I agree that to tell it properly, putting it in it's proper context, would require several pages of annotaions, showing its full historical and sociological relevance.
 
ghost dog said:
A friend of mine, and irish lad from...Limerick, says that everyone in Ireland tells 'Kerry' jokes. Like how do you recognise a Kerry mechanic, he's under a wheelbarrow' that type of thing.
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Sean Hughes (who is Irish, before anyone starts) extrapolated that further: apparently people in Kerry itself tell jokes about one bloke who lives in Killarney.

He in turn tells jokes about his rather thick tortoise...

Back on thread: it's weird, that's what it is. I thought "feed them til the first teeth" was a sensible dictum. Worked with our kids.
 
I breast-fed (or 'titty-fed', as a conveniently Irish neighbour would have it) all four of mine, for different lengths of time. The one I fed for the longest, 6 months, is now reading physics at Oxford. I'm just CERTAIN I know where he got his brains.........!
 
escargot said:
I breast-fed (or 'titty-fed', as a conveniently Irish neighbour would have it) all four of mine, for different lengths of time.
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For a moment there I thought you meant simultaneously :D
 
Recently, at a dinner party, one of the other guests casually remarked that she had suckled her youngster until it was nearly 4 years old.

I almost choked on my foie gras and then had to skip to the bathroom where I nearly puked. Later, my wife had to kick me into silence as I started to go off on one about mad evil modernists.

But seriously - this isn't normal, is it? I'd be bloody weirded - out if I could remember breast feeding off my mother.

WTF is going on when people talk such nonsense. Surely I'm right. The time to stop breast feeding is way before the youngsters have the ability to ask for a suck. Isn't it?
 
remember that thread about the 10 YO breastfeeding? now where has that got to?
 
We've milked this one before.

I have mercifully dim memories of reading about a kid of eleven?
who was given suck in the UK . . .

I'll see if I can trace the thread. :cross eye
 
There's a thread about this somewhere, if it wasn't trolled into oblivion.
 
one of mine is still happily chomping at the bit, and he is seven (7) months old, i heard (and reading above so did everyone else,but the old thing of differing ages, and locations,,classic!!) of a woman in america who was arrested for child abuse, because she was still "feeding" her twelve (12) year old boy, she said it was to comfort him???...bit sick that!!!!!!

PS i'm a bloke what do i know!
 
10, 11, 12...

8 the kid was 8, if I recall. See how our memories do betray us? :D
 
'Aty' will be breast fed for one year and is unlikely to go one any longer. Then they will be all mine to play with again! :D
 
Hadn't you better check with "Amanda" about that last bit?

You should definitely stop before they start kindergarten or pre-school. You don't want to be faced with the prospect of "Mum, can Simon come over for lunch?" do you?
 
I rarely come out with any strong views on this board ever, but I will say this ;


It's none of your business if a mother wants to breast feed her four year old occaisionally !!!!!

In fact some one that I know with a new baby and a five year old was worried as the five year old wanted to breast feed like the new baby. She asked her health visitor about this and was told to 'give her a suckle occaisionally and don't make a big deal of it'

There are all sorts of reasons why people may want/need to feed thier baby for an extended time, for example may daughter has a cows milk allergy and I was advised to breast feed her until she is at least one, and for as long as we want to after that.

I was breast fed by my Mum until I was three, I also intend to breast feed my daughter until she is at least two and I don't see anything wrong with that AT ALL !!!
 
In fact some one that I know with a new baby and a five year old was worried as the five year old wanted to breast feed like the new baby. She asked her health visitor about this and was told to 'give her a suckle occaisionally and don't make a big deal of it'
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You obviously feel strongly about this HAARP.

I'd have told the 5 year old to stop being weird. IMO the witch doctor gave the wrong advice. I think it is important to say 'no' to children when they act flaky.

The mental picture of a school age child being breast fed disturbs me. Like something from the 'League of Gentlemen'.

I've heard that tasting the mother - milk has become something of a rite of passage for new fathers, these days.
 
Although I agree with your overall point, I don't think it's right at all to dismiss the kid as "weird" or "flakey". Kids are kids. They don't know better. Although yeah- "no" is a word that should be used more often.
I don't think "its creepy" is a sound scientific argument, but I agree with you on that count too.
 
Piscez said:
Although I agree with your overall point, I don't think it's right at all to dismiss the kid as "weird" or "flakey". Kids are kids. They don't know better. Although yeah- "no" is a word that should be used more often.
I don't think "its creepy" is a sound scientific argument, but I agree with you on that count too.
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Is it the kids, or the adults that are having issues and flakiness problems, here?

A woman's body isn't just for sex, you know, guys (I read it in a book by some feminist). :D
 
I stopped when I wanted to with my kids,I just woke up one day and thought 'I don't want to do this any more' so I stopped.It was after about 13 or 14 months both times. It had nothing to do with their ages,I simply didn't want to do it any more.
 
Piscez has a good point.

I don't think there was any thing weird going on at all, I think that either the five year old probably felt a bit left out with all the attention being given to the new baby or had regressed (this is very common, for example if a child is ill or has had some other trauma) because of the stress of the arrival of the new baby.

Sorry to be sexist, but I expect the majority of you on this thread are men - and perhaps you feel a bit left out like the five year old in question ? ;)
 
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