Not surprisingly, the latest Time magazine cover has created a massive storm of controversy. The puritans are upset because it shows a breast; the cynics have been quick to point out that it's simply a desperate attempt to make the magazine relevant at a time when it's been losing relevance; the non-attachment-parenting moms are feeling attacked; and many people just think it's a weird (creepy?) seeing a three year-old breastfeeding.
The article that goes along with the cover image discusses a style of parenting that's gaining popularity - attachment parenting. It'a rejection of the whole let-them-cry-it-out and self-soothing movement that's predominated parenting in the last couple of decades.
Many editorials about the piece have been published since the magazine hit the shelves. Here's a sample from the New York Times (there are many, many more - just search):
Never Mom Enough By KJ DELL'ANTONIA
My favorite part of Time magazine’s coverage of “Attachment Parenting” wasn’t the cover image, or even the headline, “Are You Mom Enough?,” both of which beg the adjective “provocative.”
We can get caught up in whether a mother should nurse a preschooler — or, perhaps more relevant, whether that preschooler will later appreciate being photographed nursing for a national magazine. (No, and I’m so convinced that most of you will agree that I’m not going to say any more about it.)
[...]
But “Are You Mom Enough” still fails to take into account, as so many things do, that not only is there a continuum of attachment parenting from all to nothing, but there is also a continuum of parenting in all of our lives. I am no model of motherhood, but my answers to those quiz questions are all of our answers. Sometimes. Kind of. When it seemed like the right thing to do. With one baby, not the other.
Do you feel pressured to parent your children in a certain way? Sometimes. Kind of. But as Jennifer DeLeonardo put it in another discussion of “The Conflict,” those pressures vary depending on whom you’re with and how you respond to them (some people — and some magazine articles — can make you want to go right out and do the opposite). Did those pressures affect your choices about working, staying home or doing something in between? Maybe, along with a career choice, financial necessity, personal history, job availability, child care and a host of other factors — all of which, along with our personal status, are subject to evolution.
The factors and the nuances and the continuum are the reasons the conversations women have about how we balance, or combine, work and family are worth having — conversations that men have too, although with a different historical background and set of pressures. We are different parents at different times of our lives. An autism diagnosis, a financial crisis, a divorce, a move — all of those things can change us in an instant, so the the question isn’t really “does your baby sleep in your bed?” but why, and for how long? What does that say about what’s important to you, and how would you hold onto that if circumstances changed?
Read the rest of the editorial here.