Blogging on breastfeeding and society

sexualized society

My friend posted a blog about how sexualized our media has gotten, especially for children and teenagers. This is my reply.

I know, it sickens me how much children see and hear in the media. And then they act it all out on the playground, or at their parties. That's what children do to make sense of their world - they roleplay and copy to see what "fits" them. From age 2 to age 22 that's how they are wired, and the media keeps giving them false images and false ideas of fun, and what's healthy.

It just amazes me to see the difference in the children I taught at public schools, and the children of my friends who are homeschooled and whose parents carefully monitor what goes in their bodies and their minds. I see a teen drama on tv, and i pray my kids will never think that it is ok to act that way, and hope I can protect them as best I can in this souped-up sexualized society.

This society is so sexualized that it is the only country in the world that thinks breastfeeding in public is distasteful or dirty, that breastfeeding toddlers is somehow sexual. If you don't think you think that way, think upon this. The World Health Organization as well as many other health organizations believe that it is best and most healthy for the child (and yes, all children in industrialized countries as well) if the child is breastfed to three years of age, and even past that, even up to five or six years old. The average age of weaning world-wide is 4.2 years of age. Even I have a hard time with that - why is that?


It just shows how much we are brainwashed to think of everything in sexual terms. And its sad because most children are only breastfed up to six months to a year in this country, which is one of the number one reasons why we are so high on the list of childhood ailments, including ear infections, juvenile diabetes and allergies, that other countries do not have because they breastfeed longer. So it makes you wonder about the future of this country if we are so sexualized that we believe its distasteful to give our God-created milk to our young.