Masochistic Mommy

You see the world from your own perspective – of course you do. What can be harder to recognise is that not everyone else does. When you’re a child, most of the people in your world are focused on you most of the time. When you’re two, for example, you can scream when you’re hungry and someone will produce food for you. But that’s not going to work when you’re 20. Okay, so you’re thinking “No shit Sherlock”. But there are other ways in which we can all too easily assume that the world is focused on us when in fact no one is giving us a thought. Parenting is the mother of all imagined theatrical stages. We picture ourselves centre-stage, with all eyes on *our* performance. Either we think people are “breastfeeding at us ”, or a scientific study is a conspiracy to make us feel bad , or someone pointing out the risks of circumcision is spoiling for a fight with us. Such self-centrism is an easy trap to fall into. Yet part of growing up is recognising that other people might not have us in...

If you thought I’d stop at a trilogy – you were sadly mistaken, my friend. Alas, the bookstores and libraries of the world are shamelessly marinating in books that, by no stretch of the imagination, can be deemed to spit on the name of breastfeeding. It’s my mission to expose them one-by-one, even if it means writing these posts into old age. A few disclaimers before we begin: This post will be depressing at times. It will stretch the boundaries of belief. It will contain swearing. It will showcase jaw-dropping evidence of ass-hattery. It will make you fear for humanity and want to live with wolves. On that note, let’s begin! You’re the Daddy: The ultimate guide to being a new dad for blokes . Stephen Giles This book is written for dads, by a dad. Women are not the target here. Yet dads have an important role to play in facilitating breastfeeding, which makes this book even more insidious with its anti-breastfeeding mansplaining marathon. Before I leap into the bog of despair, I conced...

If you're a breastfeeding mother with the audacity to step foot aboard the Good Ship Facebook, prepare to walk the plank. For, as everyone knows, treasure 'chests' of the lactating variety are prohibited on these seas. And, because everyone knows this, there’s a good chance a buccaneer from your (so-called) matey list will betray you and hit report. Indeed, the motley crew at Facebook proudly boast that they’ve: “built industry leading technical and human systems” and: “developed sophisticated tools” to help their crew evaluate the reports they receive. “As a result, we believe we are able to remove the vast majority of content that violates our standards” ( Facebook 2013 ). Rightyo. I decided to test these ‘industry leading’ report systems. For the first time in my long and illustrious relationship with the t’internet I hit the ‘report’ button on a load of memes. The results are below. Be forewarned: the results and the content I reported (particularly the content!) fail t...

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Whilst indulging my inner bookworm at the local city library, I unwittingly stumbled upon a book written by a man called Geert Hofstede. Hofstede is an influential Dutch researcher well-known (in the social-psychology clique at least) for his research of cross-cultural groups and organizations. He played a major role in developing a framework for assessing and differentiating national cultures. Reading his jaw-dropping, hugely under-utilised trove of research has radically deepened my understanding of why we suck at breastfeeding in our society. It triggered an epiphany of sorts. And his book wasn’t even about breastfeeding! I have always known that our culture is hostile towards breastfeeding at worst, and apathetic at best. Who’s to blame for this? I had all the usual suspects lined up: capitalism, the patriarchy, rampant individualism, formula company greed. However maybe the net of blame is far, far broader than I ever imagined. Hofstede’s research revealed an interesting phenomeno...