A number of my topical posts I’ll begin with the word ‘on’. Here it happens to invite other speculation that I’ll allow folks to privately contemplate. This topic has been addressed here before and is presently being flashed across the Catholic blogosphere. Usually such topics can be settled by appealing to religious: You don’t see Sister So-and-so breastfeeding at mass, so you needn’t do so either. The pro-breastfeeding crowd has thrown the Mary card, offering up several paintings depicting her with a suckling Jesus.
First of all, yes I have seen it done. I have even seen it done at mass. No, I didn’t have a problem with it. Around some women I have had an issue with it. My wife tends to be shy and will most often move to a private place. Often times we forget that privacy is a more modern phenomenon, however privacy is generally available for those who seek it. And before someone asks, yes, I’ve eaten plenty of meals in the bathroom. And by the same token, we are prefectly willing to criticize people for doing normal things at mass. No one would think twice about looking down at someone eating a doughnut in the pew, even if he was a diabetic. Yes, babies need to eat, but mass might just not work out that Sunday. I still remember sitting in the basement with my screaming one-year-old. He wouldn’t be calm from beginning until the end, so I ended up spending the entire mass in the basement. Such is life with children.
Some may be tempted to chide me as being anti-child here. I’m sorry, but the rest of the world likes well behaved children. They don’t like screaming and misbehaved children. I don’t like my own children when they are like that, and it doesn’t make me anti-child. If you went in to the child bearing game expecting to get a medal pinned on your chest, exposed or clothed, for having a child, I have news for you: couples are expected to have children, it is hardly exceptional. Many of the folks doing the criticizing are folks who have children and lots of them. Considering that fewer than 1 in 10 strangers will bother informing you that your zipper is open or some other embarassing detail that you want to know, perhaps the person who informs you of their discomfort at the way you are breastfeeding isn’t just being a prude and is trying to be helpful. Yes, there are overly insensitive people everywhere, but that doesn’t mean the person addressing you is one of them.
Truth be told I’ve known a lot of nursing mothers. I’ve heard things said to their face and behind their back. I have met very few women in life that feel incapable of nursing their infants on demand. One I do remember took her young infant to a firemen’s dance. This event wasn’t designed for 7-year-olds, let alone tiny infants. She was incredulous that she got lots of stares from people for just feeding her baby. As her friends put, she put on a dramatic peep show for everyone leaving both breasts exposed. Yes, she was just using them as nature designed. Nature doesn’t particularly have a strong opinion on where she uses them though. Nature is an argument for indulgence, not for the disregard of others.
Astute readers will remember earlier in this very post that I had seem a mother nurse her babe at mass and that I didn’t object. As I’ve gotten older I’ve attempted to not let things bother me. Of course she was discreet and she wasn’t making a statement. She was just feeding her infant after other measures had failed. Perhaps me and three other folks noticed given the set up of the church. I’m not going to offer a hard and fast rule here. If you are the type who is prone to making arguments over fairness, then you probably shouldn’t breastfeed in church. If you are the type who worries that your actions may be an imposition upon others and desire to avoid it, then you probably should follow your good judgement based on the circumstance. If you cannot clearly delineate your life before children with your life after children, you should probably not breastfeed during mass. The period with a wide variability of feeding times is relatively short. Most folks get through it without making a federal incident.
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