Nobody's boob is hanging out
Breastfeeding in public can be done discreetly. I don't want to see anybody's boob hanging out. I don't care how the human body is misused in our sexually debauched society. Use a scarf and cover up. There are plenty of natural, beautiful, intimate things we just don't do in public.
First of all, to our dear guest, I'm sincerely not trying to pick on you, the sleepy mommies love you, and I promise I haven't forgotten about that thing you asked me about in your email either.
But it seems that comments about modest breastfeeding come up every single time the topic of nursing a baby in public comes up. Perhaps we should start adding a standard disclaimer to any blog that mentions nursing a baby in public, something to the effect of "We write this with the assumption that nursing in public is done discreetly." But truly, I don't see why this has to be spelled out. The only place I have ever seen nursing mothers with "boobs hanging out" is not the mall, not the grocery store, not church, not the La Leche League meeting, but in photo illustrations. A few of these illustrations have been for hard core granola-Raspberry Leaf-earthy-birth-goddess-type magazines; a few more have been illustrations for "how to nurse your baby" materials; the vast majority of "boob-hanging-out" photos have been for those free baby magazines available from Babies R Us (and some doctor's offices) -- you know, those magazines with all those ads for artificial baby formula....
In real life, all the nursing mothers I have seen or known have kept covered up by using slings, blankets, clothing, and so on. (It's also possible to nurse modestly without hiding under a huge tent.) Women who wish to expose their breasts probably have already found other ways to do so, and the vast majority of nursing mothers really aren't interested in having anything "hanging out" for anyone else to see. One of my LLL leaders knew a woman who was harassed by a store clerk for feeding her baby -- but the clerk had to ask "are you breastfeeding the baby?" If mom had lied and said "no", there would have been no issue. In the linked article, none of the mothers mentioned being exposed as the issue -- only the reporter mentions being "covered up in public" -- it was the mere fact of breastfeeding an older baby that drew the nosy comments. If those same older babies had been wandering around with pacifiers, bottles, or thumbs in their mouths, nobody would have batted an eyelash.
I think that most of the agita is due to the fact that formula feeding has been the norm in this country for a long time, so some people simply aren't used to seeing nursing babies, much less nursing older babies. (I started getting "are you still nursing?" comments when Hambet was five months old.) It may also be one of contraception's mutant fruits; in Mr. Luse's mounds of comments on this issue, he observes, "Even in our contraceptive times, [the nursing mother's] fecundity exerts a powerful subconscious pull."
