Jamie Lynn Grumet Feels The Need To Momsplain That Time Cover
And I just thought it looked like a mom nursing her kid. The faux-controversy over the TIME magazine breastfeeding mom continues as once again, Jamie Lynne Grumet is discussing her views on the infamous magazine cover and her decision to breastfeed her son past what the media is trying to make us debate is an “acceptable” age. Grumet, who posed on the cover of TIME breastfeeding her three-and-a-half-year-old son as he stood on a chair, has slammed TIME Magazine for its portrayal of her and attachment parenting. Grumet told ABC News:
”I definitely don’t agree with the [Time] cover and don’t agree with the article,” she said.
”Our intentions were to help relieve the stigma attached to breast-feeding past infancy,” Grumet, 26, said. ”The photo I saw wasn’t one that we were trying to pose for.”
Grumet also said:
“the Time cover image was an ”outtake” that especially alongside the blaring words ”Are You Mom Enough?” looked ”confrontational and detached.” This polarized mothers in the ”media-generated mommy wars, which I don’t even know if they exist in real life,” she said. ”It made me really, really sad.”
To “set the record straight,” Jamie Lynne Grumet now appears on the cover of the nonprofit publication Pathways to Family Wellness breast-feeding her son Aram, now 4, this time with her husband and their adopted Ethiopian son by her side.
Even though the TIME magazine breastfeeding mom has spoken out against the cover and headline before, on ABC news she feels the need to momsplain her views on breastfeeding and attachment parenting again. I personally didn’t find either magazine cover controversial or offensive, nor did either one make me feel like moms were being polarized. To me it just showed one mom’s style of parenting – attachment- and explained how some moms chose to nurse past what is usually expected in America. The text blurb over the Good Morning America video reads “Extreme Parenting” which feels to me to be more exploitive than anything Jamie Lynne Grumet is saying.
”That’s just the ignorance of not understanding full-term breast-feeding and knowing that it’s really normal in other cultures,” she said. ”It’s just not normal here.”
So she wants to breastfeed her kid until he shows signs he is ready to stop. And some moms bottle feed their kids. And some moms breastfeed until she decides she doesn’t want to anymore. And some moms start with breastfeeding and switch to formula. And some moms starts with formula and switch to breast milk. You and me? We aren’t judging these moms. We really don’t care, as long as kids are being fed and no one is being taken to a tanning booth. There are so many real issues facing parents today and so many other bad parenting decisions that deserve our actual judgement and scorn than one mom’s decision about how long to breastfeed.
The TIME magazine breastfeeding mom put breastfeeding in the spotlight and sparked conversations about nursing and attachment parenting, which is always a good thing. These types of discussions are something that all parents like to discuss. It just sort of sucks that Grumet feels she has to defend herself against what she felt was “controversial” when in reality, I feel like the majority of moms just found reading about her parenting style interesting. Us moms, we aren’t as judgey and mom-shamey as the media likes to portray us as. And pretty soon magazines will have to come up with a new poster model for what they feel like is fuel in the “mommy wars.”
Jamie Lynne Grumet said she won’t be nursing on any additional magazine covers.
”No, no, no,” she said. ”My sons are both practically weaned.”
(Photo: Time.com)
