Posting Pics of kid breastfeeding dolls

[IrishGrrl]

Kids pretending to breast feed is fine in my book. It's a good thing, maybe they will breast feed their own children one day. Posting pics of it is another matter.

[Cin]

I would like to talk about another aspect of this issue. Breastfeeding dolls and breastfeeding in general. A little girl picking up her doll and putting it to her breast is one thing. And a little kid who wants to breast feed her/his doll certainly has that option. However designing a doll whose main purpose is to make sucking noises while attached to flowers on a halter top your kid is wearing feels like a whole other ball game. It harkens back to the day when people believed a woman’s real job was as a baby factory and just naturally assumed she would get with a guy and drop some babies. It’s like training for little girls to assume their proper societal roles. It is not only gendered but biologically deterministic. Of course all toy dolls further perpetuate gender roles. That can’t be helped. And to a certain degree is fine. However a milking doll takes biology to a whole other level. With all the subtly of a train wreck it reinforces societal beliefs that little girls and women are biologically inclined towards child rearing and nurturing behaviors. According to proponents of these dolls, they teach nurturing skills to little girls. I think we have always focused on teaching nurturing skills, often confused with passivity and compliance, to our female offspring. How about a little nurturing skills for our boy children? I mean since when is nurturing behavior only a good thing when done by a woman?

Another problem I see with breastfeeding dolls is how it helps to reinforce the established belief that breast feeding is the normal way to feed a baby. I understand that it is the accepted best way to feed one’s child. The benefits of breast feeding make it the good choice. It’s just that it ends up sounding like breast feeding is the only choice for good mothers. And to chose convenience instead makes you a bad mother or at the least a selfish mother who puts her own needs over the needs of her child. WIC, a program that gives assistance to women in need, has decided it can cut back on infant formula making it only supplemental because women should just breast feed. Again others are controlling women’s bodies and telling them what they should be doing with them.

I believe breast feeding should be a socially accepted act. Currently it is seen as impolite at best in the western world. Maybe it’s because women’s bodies are too much viewed as sexual rather than functioning. Women’s breasts are seen as sex objects that need to be hidden away. So while I agree breast feeding needs to become more publicly acceptable, I am talking about women breast feeding not little girls breast feeding. Little girls strapping on flower nipples to breast feed their sucking dolls just seems fraught with biological determinism and a healthy degree of ickyness.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

I would like to talk about another aspect of this issue. Breastfeeding dolls and breastfeeding in general. A little girl picking up her doll and putting it to her breast is one thing. And a little kid who wants to breast feed her/his doll certainly has that option. However designing a doll whose main purpose is to make sucking noises while attached to flowers on a halter top your kid is wearing feels like a whole other ball game. It harkens back to the day when people believed a woman’s real job was as a baby factory and just naturally assumed she would get with a guy and drop some babies. It’s like training for little girls to assume their proper societal roles. It is not only gendered but biologically deterministic. Of course all toy dolls further perpetuate gender roles. That can’t be helped. And to a certain degree is fine. However a milking doll takes biology to a whole other level. With all the subtly of a train wreck it reinforces societal beliefs that little girls and women are biologically inclined towards child rearing and nurturing behaviors. According to proponents of these dolls, they teach nurturing skills to little girls. I think we have always focused on teaching nurturing skills, often confused with passivity and compliance, to our female offspring. How about a little nurturing skills for our boy children? I mean since when is nurturing behavior only a good thing when done by a woman?

Another problem I see with breastfeeding dolls is how it helps to reinforce the established belief that breast feeding is the normal way to feed a baby. I understand that it is the accepted best way to feed one’s child. The benefits of breast feeding make it the good choice. It’s just that it ends up sounding like breast feeding is the only choice for good mothers. And to chose convenience instead makes you a bad mother or at the least a selfish mother who puts her own needs over the needs of her child. WIC, a program that gives assistance to women in need, has decided it can cut back on infant formula making it only supplemental because women should just breast feed. Again others are controlling women’s bodies and telling them what they should be doing with them.

I believe breast feeding should be a socially accepted act. Currently it is seen as impolite at best in the western world. Maybe it’s because women’s bodies are too much viewed as sexual rather than functioning. Women’s breasts are seen as sex objects that need to be hidden away. So while I agree breast feeding needs to become more publicly acceptable, I am talking about women breast feeding not little girls breast feeding. Little girls strapping on flower nipples to breast feed their sucking dolls just seems fraught with biological determinism and a healthy degree of ickyness.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Especially seeing the web site for these dolls says this:

Why Little Girls Need to Learn to Breastfeed

Little girls need to learn to breastfeed. Berjuan Toys, the company that has always supported the development of small children by producing interesting, engaging dolls, continues its tradition with the release of this innovative baby doll, The Breast Milk Baby.

The Breast Milk Baby lets young girls express their love and affection in the most natural way possible, just like mommy! The Breast Milk Baby represents a revolution in design by teaching children the nurturing skills they’ll need to raise their own healthy babies. Just put on the fashionable top included with each Breast Milk Baby, bring the baby’s mouth up to the pretty flower, and enjoy the closeness, the loving bond between mother and child.

The United States Health Resources and Services Administration has made it a national goal to have at least 75% of all mothers breastfeeding for at least six months by 2010. The Breast Milk Baby will help to reach that goal by helping to accept and promote breastfeeding as the most loving, healthy practice for a mother and her infant1.

Breastfeeding isn’t just a wonderful practice for the health of the infant. Mothers who breastfeed are more likely to return to their former weight before childbirth, and have a reduced risk of breast cancer and osteoporosis for the rest of their lives2. The Breast Milk Baby helps mothers and children get the most out of life, while spending less time and money at the doctor’s office!

Thanks for this. It is bringing my concerns into a better focus.

[twist of lime]

It makes me uncomfortable.

It stems from my personal belief that breast feeding is a very intimate time between mother and child, something sacred and innocent. I don't think it's bad, just private.

Most every moment is a moment of learning. We are constantly pointing our children in what we believe to be the right direction, not to say that she wasn't pointed in the right direction, just not the direction I would have chosen for my child.

I do not have an issue with women breast feeding in public. I don't stare at or otherwise intrude upon someone while they are eating, no matter if they are sitting, standing or cradled in someone's arms. It just isn't polite.

[Words]

Perhaps if more little girls were to appreciate from a very young age the real reason why they are different to boys when it comes to their chests, then more little boys would appreciate it too and not grow up thinking that breasts are nothing but things to play with when they're older.

I think the dolls are great. Would I put up a picture of my daughter, were she younger, playing with one on Facebook? No, but then I wouldn't put up a picture of her anyway, the reason being that I truly believe that in the wrong hands, even the most innocent of images - a young child reading a book, for example - can and will be sexualized.

Words

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Words

Perhaps if more little girls were to appreciate from a very young age the real reason why they are different to boys when it comes to their chests, then more little boys would appreciate it too and not grow up thinking that breasts are nothing but things to play with when they're older.

I think that is a good point. The natural function of breasts are not to be toys for boys or anyone for that matter. Breasts are more than things to play with. Unless of course you don't have children. It's okay not to use them as baby feeders... ever. Just like it's okay not to use sex as a tool for procreation. I guess a healthy middle ground is good. It just reminded me of some things I hear from some of my mother's very religious friends about putting the emphasis on the function of sex, you know to create another life. I'm just wary.

[EnderD_503]

Seems to be a lot of Facebook/breastfeeding controversies going on lately. I don't see anything wrong with women breastfeeding in public or putting up pictures of themselves breastfeeding on social media sites. I think this North American perspective of breastfeeding = bad is pretty fucking horrible. I think it says a lot about the extent to which North American society sees women's bodies as strictly sexual objects. There is nothing shameful about breasts or women showing them in public, and nothing shameful or "obscene" about women breastfeeding in public.

That said, those women are adults who have children and have made the decision to breastfeed their children. I see it differently when it comes to young girls. Showing images of young girls pretending to breastfeed on public sites seems a lot like something that could go terribly wrong, whether in attracting sexual predators/endangering them, or by propagating ideas on raising children in "proper"/traditional gender roles.

Originally Posted by Words

Perhaps if more little girls were to appreciate from a very young age the real reason why they are different to boys when it comes to their chests, then more little boys would appreciate it too and not grow up thinking that breasts are nothing but things to play with when they're older.

I think the dolls are great. Would I put up a picture of my daughter, were she younger, playing with one on Facebook? No, but then I wouldn't put up a picture of her anyway, the reason being that I truly believe that in the wrong hands, even the most innocent of images - a young child reading a book, for example - can and will be sexualized.

Words

While agree that society teaches young girls to view their own bodies as sexual objects (and boys viewing women's bodies as sexual objects), I also agree with what MissTick said about women being brought up to see their bodies as baby-making machines/boys to see women's bodies as baby-making machines. Too many young girls are brought up by their families under the assumption that she will one day have her own child, and if she expresses that she has no interest her family will often tell her that it's a "stage" and she'll "grow out of it." If she doesn't her family "worries," they might even talk to a mental health professional about it. Women/girls who do not want to bear children/be mothers are seen as "unnatural" or "strange" far too often in our society.

To me a doll like that seems an awful lot like a toy company trying to reinforce gender roles, and the stereotypical female role of "mother" and "nurturer." But people who are assigned female at birth are far more diverse than that. Not all women want to be mothers or see "the real reason they are different to boys when it comes to their chests." There are women and girls who see their breasts as nothing to do with breastfeeding and motherhood, and would prefer not to have their breasts thought of that way. Who see their breasts as for their own pleasure, for their own pride, empowerment and self-perception, and nothing to do with reproduction and motherhood. And what about women who can't breastfeed or don't have breasts? Are they being told they need to breastfeed in order to be a mother? That they can't be a mother?

That aside, what makes a parent decide to buy their kid a doll like that? Considering how many trans children or non-normative children (and here I mean any child who simply doesn't view their own bodies in a way that revolves around reproductive roles) who are assigned female at birth are brought up being forced into gender roles, this seems like yet another toy to reinforce stereotypes in children who want nothing to do with those stereotypes. Is this toy for children who truly want it, or more a toy for parents to "make their little girls more like mommy"?

I think there are better ways to teach children that women's bodies are not sexual objects than by giving them breastfeeding dolls.

That's just my two cents.

[blush]

Calling a woman's breasts "baby feeders" is gross. Almost as gross as the amount of money formula companies have spent and made convincing American women that their bodies are incapable of feeding their child.

It's not a gender role to encourage nurturing, it's a human trait we need to encourage in all of us. Nurturing doesn't make a child weak or passive.

It's adults that assign gender suitability to toys. A child playing with a baby doll is just that: a child playing with a baby doll. Why would we assume that a transgendered child would not play with a baby doll? The child chooses the toy, as the wand chooses the wizard.

[Martina]

i think it's weird that we think it's weird. i also do not see breastfeeding as a private act. Intimate? yes sometimes. Private. No. Is eating private? Is it private when a baby is gobbling down jars of baby food?

[Words]

EnderD,

I get what you are saying...kind of. Thing is, why all the fuss about these particular dolls? There are peeing dolls on the market, dolls with pacifiers, dolls that walk, dolls that talk, dolls that don't do anything...All of which could be seen as reinforcing the idea that most young girls will eventually be/want to be mothers.

I just think, to quote Martina, that it's weird that we think it's weird, because to me, that feels like it's us who are doing all the sexualizing.

Words

[Soft*Silver]

hate me if you will, but frankly I do not like breastfeeding in public. I dont need to defend myself here but I will say this: if I am sitting in a restaurant I dont want to watch a woman suckle a child. If I am in a theater, at a party, anywhere in public, I dont want to see this activity. If I am in someone's home or even if they are in my home and its time for baby to be fed, then by all means, breast feed. I changed my daughter out in the LR when she was a baby. I surely wouldnt do that in public. You can tell me its wrong to show genitals in public but not wrong to show a woman's breast in public and i will counter that its not her breast that bothers me, its about the "time and place" for certain acts.

and I wont engage in arguments about this. its how I feel and you can feel your way and neither of us has anything to do with whether or not jane Doe is going to feed her baby in public.. thats HER choice and I will fight for her to have that right. Even if its not what i would chose to do, nor want to see in public, its still HER right. my feminism is higher priority than my personal value laden proprieties.

BUT I do have concern with images of children on the cyberland. There are some strange fiends out there and I can see some of them constrewing the natural act of a child modeling breastfeeding into sexual erotica.

I know its meant to be sweet but images are never safe once they are in cyberland. I saw a doctored photograph of two elderly women where someone very skillfully made them barebreasted while they were drinking coffee in a restaurant. Another woman, who had elephantitus, was plastered all over this one site as the twinkie girl...making her medical abnormality into a bullyfest against an overweight girl. Did those elderly women or that woman with elephantitus every dream their photos would become beacons of ill humour on social networks? No! If they do that with simple photos, god help photos of children suckling dolls...

frankly, I wouldnt put any child's image in cyber until laws catch up to the technology leaps...

[Martina]

Newborns eat at least every four hours. Unless you want to force new mothers to stay home, they are going to have to breastfeed in public. It's always the time and place to feed a hungry baby. Unless you want to keep nursing mothers out of public spaces, it's always the time and place to breastfeed.

My response to people who don't want to see it is -- don't look.

Almost all states protect a mother's right to breastfeed.

People who feel uncomfortable about it and show that discomfort are the problem. No one should ever do anything to make a woman nursing in public feel self-conscious. She is doing the very best thing for her child.

i truly don't care what the source of some people's discomfort is. They really need to just not show it.

i even think that people ought to really hesitate before they share IN PUBLIC their feeling that seeing a woman breastfeeding bothers them. A nursing mother might hear. Or a woman who will be nursing at some point could hear. The states have made the decision, and the courts have upheld these laws time and again. It's over. There is no reason to make a nursing mother feel in any way like she has to worry about what others think. She doesn't need the stress. Nor does her baby.