Why is breastfeeding in public acceptable?

volchitsa · 28-06-2019 06:58PM

physioman wrote: »

Three of the most beneficial pieces of equipment that my wife found during breast feeding were the breast feeding cushion, feeding apron and breast Angel aluminium cup (can't rem the name). Not marketing ****e but useful.
We live in Ireland which rarely gets hot apart from the last 2 days and the aprons are spacious at the top to allow mother to view the baby and baby to remain cool.
Exposure of the human flesh in Ireland has been frowned upon due mainly to the teachings of the Catholic church.
Look we'll never agree and that's fine. At the end of the days your child was breast fed and so was mine. That's the most important thing

Yes but the point is that by making it something that has to be hidden, we are ensuring that it will always be seen by some people as shameful. Comparisons with defecating or having sex in public are hateful and stupid - if they were comparable, would it be enough to just cover yourselves in a blanket to make it OK to continue having sex in public? Or to have a sh1t?

It's obviously not the same, but those attitudes put women off the idea of doing it at all. If you're not super motivated, why put yourself through that?

Oh but wait, we're also great at criticising women who bottle feed as well.
Seems like women just can't win. :rolleyes:

Ireland has a really low rate of breastfeeding, and promoting the idea that women should be expected to cover up to breast feed perpetuates that view of it as shameful. I understand why many women do cover up, but it's sad really, because for every woman who buys the special apron or the shawl there are probably several more who decide it'd just be easier to bottle feed.

One eyed Jack · 28-06-2019 06:58PM

Gwen Cooper wrote: »

They are there because breasts and nipples develop in fetuses much earlier than their genitals. That’s also a secondary school science book right there.

Reading your posts I’m really not sure if you failed sex education or if sex education failed you.

It’s the fact that you were arguing that the primary function of their mammary glands is for feeding their babies that I figured maybe you weren’t aware that men have mammary glands too that do absolutely nothing.

Your original point said nothing about how they developed, and you still haven’t provided any explanation as to why men have mammary glands if their primary function is to feed babies.

Dr.Danic · 28-06-2019 06:58PM

Because it’s a mother feeding her baby. What’s more important - a baby getting fed when they’re hungry? Or a stranger who is somehow offended or inconvenienced by the sight of it?

Lackadaisical · 28-06-2019 06:59PM

Breast feeding was very, very much normal until the advent of formula milk which only came about as a mass market thing relatively late in the industrial era. Cows milk isn't sufficiently nutrient rich and has the wrong ratios of various components for human babies. That's why formula milks are modified and enhanced artificially to make them suitable human baby food and the first formula didn't appear until 1865.

It requires a lot of industrial knowhow and access to clean water. Neither of those was possible until then and in much of the developing world the lack of access to clean water is a huge issue and one of the reasons why feeding with formula shouldn't be encouraged in those areas.

Prior to that if a mother couldn't produce breast milk for whatever reason she would have to ask someone else to act as a "wet nurse". Sometimes this might have been a relative or friend, but they were also employed and paid, particularly by the upper classes.

Babies who didn't have access to breast milk would have been malnourished or even died. Until weaning age, human babies, like all mammals need breast milk from their own species to survive. All formula is is an approximation of breast milk.

All mammals breastfeed. It's one of the defining characteristics of being a mammal!

jam_mac_jam · 28-06-2019 07:00PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Yeah babies ate plants not milk. Wow

Nobody said babies ate plants not milk?

I was referring to infant nutrition long before formula was invented. Infants were fed whatever could be foraged for them. Some infants were fed and still died because they weren’t aware as we are now thousands of years of human development later that oh, soy milk isn’t recommended for under six month olds. If only they’d had a Swiftcare clinic back then.

The other poster is right, you can’t fix stupid, and it would be utterly stupid to compare what does or doesn’t seem logical today with what does or doesn’t seem logical then. They were entirely different circumstances where being stared at by other people as they fed their infants were among the least of their concerns. Nowadays some people think breastfeeding makes them special. Like I said - it’s a trend for some Western liberal types who are obsessed with “natural is best” type stuff.

They drank milk. Untill they got old enough for solid food. If they didn't they would die.

The irony of you implying I am stupid. You are just ranting now at this stage because you won't back down.

Yeah. Silly liberal women are clearly the only ones who breastfeed.

ceadaoin. · 28-06-2019 07:03PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Nobody said babies ate plants not milk?

I was referring to infant nutrition long before formula was invented. Infants were fed whatever could be foraged for them. Some infants were fed and still died because they weren’t aware as we are now thousands of years of human development later that oh, soy milk isn’t recommended for under six month olds. If only they’d had a Swiftcare clinic back then.

I'm pretty sure people since the dawn of time have known that babies are fed breast milk exclusively for a period of time. If for some reason the mother was unable to provide it, another woman would have fed the child. this practice has been fairly common throughout history. It would be pretty extreme circumstances where they would have to resort to feeding a baby with foraged food. This would be an act of desperation because the baby would die and they knew this. I mean, people weren't completely stupid before the advent of scientific knowledge .

As for why is breastfeeding in public acceptable - it's just a baby being fed ffs. People eat in public all the time and aren't told to retreat to the toilet or a special eating room. I've never seen a nipple exposed when a child is breastfeeding. Unless you're really trying to look, you can't see anything at all except a babies head. What's the issue?

volchitsa · 28-06-2019 07:06PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Nobody said babies ate plants not milk?[

You said exactly that.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

They’d eat what they were given, or die. What they were given would likely have consisted of mainly plant based nutrition, including milk from plants like I suggested earlier, long before breastfeeding was a thing -

The Evolution of Diet

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I was referring to infant nutrition long before formula was invented. Infants were fed whatever could be foraged for them. Some infants were fed and still died because they weren’t aware as we are now thousands of years of human development later that oh, soy milk isn’t recommended for under six month olds. If only they’d had a Swiftcare clinic back then.

No actually you're wrong.

If the woman didn't have enough breast milk, traditionally someone else fed the baby. In later times it was even a profession, called a "wet nurse".
Plant milk? FFS.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

The other poster is right, you can’t fix stupid, and it would be utterly stupid to compare what does or doesn’t seem logical today with what does or doesn’t seem logical then. They were entirely different circumstances where being stared at by other people as they fed their infants were among the least of their concerns. Nowadays some people think breastfeeding makes them special. Like I said - it’s a trend for some Western liberal types who are obsessed with “natural is best” type stuff.

Damn right you can't fix stupid.
One of the big problems with formula milk in poorer countries is that it requires clean water, babies die of diarrhoea otherwise. I can't imagine "plant milk" would be any safer an alternative in the past, never mind its dodgy nutritional value. At best it's purely a last resort, like people eating grass during the famine. Doesn't make it food.

jam_mac_jam · 28-06-2019 07:07PM

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

One eyed Jack wrote: »

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Yeah babies ate plants not milk. Wow

Nobody said babies ate plants not milk?I was referring to infant nutrition long before formula was invented. Infants were fed whatever could be foraged for them. Some infants were fed and still died because they weren’t aware as we are now thousands of years of human development later that oh, soy milk isn’t recommended for under six month olds. If only they’d had a Swiftcare clinic back then.The other poster is right, you can’t fix stupid, and it would be utterly stupid to compare what does or doesn’t seem logical today with what does or doesn’t seem logical then. They were entirely different circumstances where being stared at by other people as they fed their infants were among the least of their concerns. Nowadays some people think breastfeeding makes them special. Like I said - it’s a trend for some Western liberal types who are obsessed with “natural is best” type stuff.

You said they ate plants. You said that breastfeeding is cultural.They drank milk. Untill they got old enough for solid food. If they didn't they would die.The irony of you implying I am stupid. You are just ranting now at this stage because you won't back down. Yeah. Silly liberal women are clearly the only ones who breastfeed.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

And how would babies eat before formula was invented?

They’d eat what they were given, or die. What they were given would likely have consisted of mainly plant based nutrition, including milk from plants like I suggested earlier, long before breastfeeding was a thing -

The Evolution of Diet

Gwen Cooper wrote: »

I can't decide if you're trolling or not.

I know what you mean - I can’t decide if I’m being trolled or not or are people actually pretending they aren’t aware of stuff that could have been learned from a secondary school science book.

Just because my boobs look different than the boobs of other mammals doesn't mean that they are there for sex.

It’s a theory of how humans evolved, I really don’t care for your personal feelings towards what you think your breasts are or aren’t for. That’s why I didn’t point out the fact that there are women who have breasts in spite of the fact that it is biologically impossible for them to become pregnant, or for that matter produce sufficient milk to nourish a human infant. I’m not the person who suggested they ever had a primary function that just so neatly happens to coincide with my own opinion as to why humans have breasts, let alone why the female of the species have larger breasts. Purely from a scientific point of view the differences between the humans physical characteristics as they relate to sexual development, is due to hormones such as testosterone and oestrogen, and a different set of hormones are responsible for milk production in the mammary glands (“switched off” in males, but entirely possible to turn on with the introduction of specific hormones, or a medical condition due to hormone imbalance).

Also, literally the sign of mammals is that they have mammary glands that are used to feed their young. I'm very interested to find out what you think the babies of cavemen used to drink.

And as I pointed out to you above, males have mammary glands too. They’re not used for feeding anyone. They’re just... there!

I already answered the infant nutrition question in early man who descended from primates.

Or simply from the evolutionary point of view, since you mentioned that too - primates breastfeed their babies too, and we are in the same group as them.

Yes they do, and because we started incorporating meat into our diets, as opposed to remaining like our ape cousins, we developed larger brains (and a bit more besides - apes have tiny penises compared to humans, but they have massive testicles). We began to think of ourselves as civilised, and breastfeeding was something primitive is what I suggested, but very similar attitudes to women who breastfed existed - that it was something only animals did and civilised humans were above that sort of thing.

Oh look you did say babies would eat plants. Plant milk no less. Not sure which plant would have the necessary nutrition...

volchitsa · 28-06-2019 07:11PM

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Oh look you did say babies would eat plants. Plant milk no less. Not sure which plant would have the necessary nutrition...

I'm sure Jack will tell us any time now what plants give milk with enough of the right proteins and all the nutrients that babies need to stay alive, never mind thrive.

Imagine all that money wasted buying expensive baby formula when people could have just crushed up some plants and fed them for free!

One eyed Jack · 28-06-2019 07:25PM

volchitsa wrote: »

You said exactly that.

No actually you're wrong.

You even quoted exactly what I said, and claimed I said something else. That’s not uncommon for you to twist what I say so with what little respect I can’t be arsed to muster, I’ll do you the courtesy of at least making you aware I have no intention of any further interaction with you when your aim appears only to argue in bad faith.

Quote my posts all you want, you won’t be getting a response.

One eyed Jack · 28-06-2019 07:27PM

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Oh look you did say babies would eat plants. Plant milk no less. Not sure which plant would have the necessary nutrition...

No I did not say that, nor did I suggest that any plant had then or has now the necessary nutrition an infant requires. When they don’t have it, they die. One would think that much was obvious. Apparently not for some people.

jam_mac_jam · 28-06-2019 07:34PM

You haven't a notion of what you are talking about or even what your own point is.

It's like arguing with a crazy person.

One eyed Jack · 28-06-2019 07:39PM

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

They drank milk. Untill they got old enough for solid food. If they didn't they would die.

The irony of you implying I am stupid. You are just ranting now at this stage because you won't back down.

Yeah. Silly liberal women are clearly the only ones who breastfeed.

I never implied you were stupid at all. The fact is I know you’re far from stupid, but you play a mean game of playing dumb.

I have nothing to back down from because you still haven’t addressed my point as to why men have mammary glands if according to you mammary glands primary function is to feed babies?

And I didn’t say silly liberal women at all. I said liberal types, and it is mainly liberal types who are at the forefront of the recent resurgence of breastfeeding openly in public. The vast majority of women who choose to breastfeed and who are able to breastfeed have been getting on with it quietly without the need for validation on social media or the need to draw attention to themselves so they can express not just milk, but a fairly insecure streak in themselves too.

Modern attempts to promote breastfeeding are a lifestyle choice as opposed to a necessity that humans had to evolve into in order to survive, then it fell out of favour among the medical and scientific communities for its potentially deadly disease transmissions, but it was throughout that time and still is practiced in more traditional societies as opposed to liberal societies where when women know they have choices available to them, they don’t have to put up with what can often be painful breastfeeding which they’ll rarely talk about for fear of being viewed as a “terrible mother who doesn’t want to do her best for her baby”.

I’m all for breastfeeding by choice, I don’t encourage breastfeeding by coercion and telling women breast is best in 2019 for ideological reasons as opposed to any actual difference in outcomes in terms of overall health benefits.

jam_mac_jam · 28-06-2019 07:41PM

Again. Please do not imply I am stupid or dumb.

Thanks.

OMM 0000 · 28-06-2019 07:43PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I have nothing to back down from because you still haven’t addressed my point as to why men have mammary glands if according to you mammary glands primary function is to feed babies?

Because every fetus is initially female, and then a hormonal change determines if it's going to change to a male. That's why men have nipples.

I think you should stop having this discussion as you're not coming across well.

ceadaoin. · 28-06-2019 07:48PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I have nothing to back down from because you still haven’t addressed my point as to why men have mammary glands if according to you mammary glands primary function is to feed babies?

.

Because every human develops the same way until sex hormones are released at a certain point of gestation. Males may have mammary glands but they are undeveloped and non functional. If the primary function of breasts isn't for feeding babies then why would this be the case? If there was some other purpose then surely males would develop them too?

lawred2 · 28-06-2019 07:50PM

ZilkyG wrote: »

Genuine question. This seems to be all the rage now, and the argument for it, is that it's completely natural! Well so is ****ting, yet society dictates that we must withdraw to the shadows for something so 'natural'.

0/10

lawred2 · 28-06-2019 07:51PM

Lol breastfeeding is a lifestyle choice

Plumbthedepths · 28-06-2019 07:54PM

One eyed Jack wrote:

Nature doesnâ€™t have an intent. Thereâ€™s no specific reason has ever been determined as to why humans breastfeed (plenty of various theories put forward though), but itâ€™s certainly not something nature intended.

One eyed Jack wrote:

Soy milk would likely have been just as popular as breastfeeding, if it didnâ€™t taste like shÃ¬te.

One eyed Jack wrote:

Theyâ€™d eat what they were given, or die. What they were given would likely have consisted of mainly plant based nutrition, including milk from plants like I suggested earlier, long before breastfeeding was a thing -

Fair play for refusing to back down eventhough you have posted some utterly bizarre claims and pseudo facts.

mikeymouse · 28-06-2019 08:10PM

I haven't read the whole thread , so if this (irishman on london tube) has been put up before ,ignore

martingriff · 28-06-2019 08:14PM

ZilkyG wrote: »

So is crapping.

Yes however they may have germs in it and someone may pick it up so you have a place to go to collect it.

Breast feeding is not the same it is just a baby been feed.

NSAman · 28-06-2019 09:26PM

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

I wonder how the babies did eat plants without teeth. Maybe they are magic.

My grandad ate pizza without teeth... that was frigging hilarious.

One eyed Jack · 28-06-2019 09:27PM

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Again. Please do not imply I am stupid or dumb.

Thanks.

Again, I didn’t imply you were stupid. If I thought you were stupid I just wouldn’t engage at all, it’s that simple.

For what it’s worth though, what I was referring to as stupid was an earlier posters point that soy milk is not recommended for infants less than 6 months. We know that now whereas in the time of early man, it’s a reasonable assumption to make that they weren’t as clued in on the nutritional values of their diets as we are now with an abundance of variety to pick and choose from as opposed to trying to get nutrition from whatever could be foraged. The idea of critical and logical thinking by today’s standards as though it could be applied then takes the kind of ignoring cultural and historical factors that has been prevalent throughout this thread to come to the conclusion that the only reason for the fact that more women don’t breastfeed can only be because of either perverts or prudes putting them off.

It’s as though some people are incapable of nuance even though I know the opposite to be closer to reality. If you still think I implied you were stupid it’s because you want to think that, not because I actually ever even as much as implied any such thing.

One eyed Jack · 28-06-2019 09:43PM

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Because every human develops the same way until sex hormones are released at a certain point of gestation. Males may have mammary glands but they are undeveloped and non functional. If the primary function of breasts isn't for feeding babies then why would this be the case? If there was some other purpose then surely males would develop them too?

Yes I understand all that, but it was Gwen’s assertion that the primary function of mammary glands is for feeding babies. I don’t normally engage in reducing people down to purely the sum of their biological functions, but even if I had to, it’s clear that mammary glands don’t have a “primary function” that isn’t simply associated with them by virtue of cultural values. Certainly there’s no biological basis for the belief they have a primary function. There are many theories as to why humans evolved the way they have done, and we’re by no means done yet either, so assumptions about our biology or evolution are based more upon cultural values of the time (see earlier scientific opinions about race for example).

It doesn’t follow that if there was some other primary purpose of mammary glands that males would have theirs switched on too, or that they would develop larger breasts at the onset of puberty, because that’s all controlled by hormones, and without putting too fine a point on it - there’s a reason why people who experience gender dysphoria are put on a lifetime course of sex hormones - because they want more developed breast tissue naturally, not because they want to feed babies, nor could they still feed babies.

Essentially, we aren’t restricted by evolution any more, we’ve been overcoming the restrictions placed upon us -as a consequence of nature for some time now, and the idea that breasts primary function is for feeding babies? If that’s what you choose to believe, have at it, I wouldn’t try to stop you, I couldn’t. But I don’t have to buy that nonsense when Western society is practically awash with an infinite amount of reasons why breasts are fcuking deadly

eviltwin · 28-06-2019 09:57PM

The best food for an infant is breast milk, it's uniquely tailored to the needs of the child, is good for mum, it's free, hygienic and doesn't need the preparation involved in formula. As already mentioned our breast feeding rates are incredibly low and we should be doing everything we can to encourage more women to do it. Part of that is our attitude to breast feeding mothers, we should not make them feel bad for doing something so important, nor should we make them feel they need to stay indoors or retreat to a public toilet to do it.

paleoperson · 28-06-2019 10:22PM

Gwen Cooper wrote: »

I can't believe I actually have to say this.

I can assure you that not only did you not have to say it but it adds nothing to the discussion.

Gwen Cooper wrote: »

The boobs and nipples primarily exist so women can feed their babies, not for sexual pleasure.

They exist for both. The penis and vagina also have multiple functions.

It's almost like, when adults reach a certain level of thinking and have nothing to occupy themselves with, they start to question the very basics, and sometimes regress to an infantile level of understanding again.

FunLover18 · 28-06-2019 11:39PM

Mammary glands produce milk. That's what they do, it's not some weird side effect of another function.

volchitsa · 29-06-2019 12:14AM

paleoperson wrote: »

I can assure you that not only did you not have to say it but it adds nothing to the discussion.

They exist for both. The penis and vagina also have multiple functions.

Which actually shows that you are wrong about female breasts : many societies, in Africa for instance, don't see breasts as sexually arousing at all, but for instance the sight of an ankle may be considered shocking. Or a woman's hair. It's a learned response. Unlike the different functions of the penis, which are actually its functions. The only function of the mammary glands is to produce milk.

It's almost like, when adults reach a certain level of thinking and have nothing to occupy themselves with, they start to question the very basics, and sometimes regress to an infantile level of understanding again.

Well, you do a good line in patronising other people at least, whatever about the level of your own thinking.

Lackadaisical · 29-06-2019 02:11AM

mikeymouse wrote: »

I haven't read the whole thread , so if this (irishman on london tube) has been put up before ,ignore

Just to point out that is actually a social experiment done by Troll Station. The reactions of those around them are interesting though.

mikeymouse · 29-06-2019 02:16AM

Lackadaisical wrote: »

Just to point out that is actually a social experiment done by Troll Station. The reactions of those around them are interesting though.

That was the shortened version,
the full version went on to disclose the fact it was a setup, and they all had a good laugh.
Good acting though,especially the Irish guy.

Why is breastfeeding in public acceptable?

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