Breastfeeding Reality Show? 'Extreme Parenting' Exposes 'Kooky' Parenting Habits
A breastfeeding reality show? Television has possibly hit a new low. The people who brought you the fantastically bad reality shows Bridezillas and Dance Moms are now planning to shock the masses with their newest installment, Extreme Parenting, according to the Daily Mail.
It's a close-up investigation into some of America's odd parenting rituals, the Daily Mail said.
First and foremost, breastfeeding is not a bad thing. In fact, it's one of the healthiest things a mother can do for her child, WomensHealth.gov says.
With that said, women should breastfeed their children until they are two years old, according to the World Health Organization. Mothers should exclusively supply their children with breast milk and then begin to wean their children off of it after six months. However, mothers should continue to make breast milk a staple in their children's diet until they are two.
Extreme Parenting will focus on mothers who continue to provide their children their lacteal juices long beyond the age of two.
The practice got loads of attention when TIME magazine's May issue featured Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, an attractive, young blonde whose four-year-old boy was latched onto his mother's bosom with the help of a stepstool. The boy also happens to be creepily staring at the viewer in the photo next to the headline that reads, Are You Mom Enough?
Personally, if the kid is using a stepstool to suck at your teat, he's too old. But in the article, Grumet divulges that she was breastfed until age six, according to the Los Angeles Times, and she has fond memories of those days.
She said to Time, My mother breast-fed me until I was six years old until I self-weaned. Her encouragement to breast-feed is why we were so successful.
She described breastfeeding as really warm. It's like embracing your mother, like a hug. You feel comforted, nurtured and really, really loved. I had so much self-confidence as a child, and I know it's from that. I never felt like she would ever leave me. I felt that security.
Lactation consultant Karen McGratty, who spoke to Soda Head and still nurses her 3-year-old son, said, Experienced pediatricians realize that the benefits of breastfeeding don't just magically disappear after one year.
Though Jessica Pielko from Care2 agrees with breastfeeding children of a certain age, she's wary about how the show will depict breastfeeding.
But can the company responsible for the exploitative and maternally manipulative 'Dance Moms' really present the idea of breast feeding beyond infancy in any way other than as some moralistically confused and sexually problematic trope? I doubt it, she wrote.
Would you want to watch a breastfeeding reality show?
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