Posting Pics of kid breastfeeding dolls
 

It's O.K. to Post Pictures of Kids Breastfeeding Their Dolls on Facebook

Proving that it still doesn't quite have a handle on what's offensive and what isn't, Facebook's latest apology has to do with taking down photos of young girls pantomiming breastfeeding. Ok, so the second part of that may strike you as a bit weird (especially if you don't know any girls who did that with any of their dolls), but apparently it's quite all right to post pictures of your children mock breastfeeding on the popular social media platform, as the pro-breastfeeding U.K. website Express Yourself Mums found out. The site had their Facebook page pulled and reinstated after its owners uploaded pictures (above) of their young girls breastfeeding. As The Guardian notes, "Facebook has a history of categorising photos of breastfeeding as 'obscene content' and removing them. But this is the first time a British group – or a picture of children role-playing breastfeeding – has been taken down." Facebook has also had a history peppered with controversy of keeping offensive jokes on for too long and more recently, taking down abortion instructions, which all kind of circles back to free speech and the problems of maintaining that on a money-making website. One analyst puts Facebook's censorship problems succinctly. "The risk is that it becomes associated with such acts as the US government taking down Wikileaks or the Chinese restricting Google ... On the other hand its commercial revenues depend on it not being linked to publicly odious sentiments."

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/globa...acebook/47161/


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Condsidering I have been mulling this over for the last hour, pictures of young children simulating breastfeeding is just not sitting well with me.

I dont find breastfeeding, even in public, to be offensive. It doesnt bother me for kids to simulate what they may see at home, in the home.

What does bother me, I think, is posting pictures of it on the internet. I tend to fail to see the need to people to post pictures about every aspect of the lives, or to share every deal of it with a world of virtual strangers.

Something about doing this to kids seems exploitive to me. Parents go to extraordinary lengths to protect their children and the innocence of their children. Yet, they will post something for the entire world to see, some of those who are people who sexualize the innocent and playful acts of young children.

Wondering if this is bugging anyone else.

I think that I just wrote and erased 3 different responses to this. lol I feel a bit mixed about this. Had I had facebook when my kids were younger and had I taken a picture of my oldest mock breastfeed her dolls(which is a normal behaviour as they watch mom nurse and tend to younger babies) I may have put it on my facebook, which is only open to those who are on it (friends and family) to share the cuteness. So, in that sense to share with people you love a moment that you found worth sharing there is nothing wrong with it. Not directed at you, but just a general question, what would the response be if the pictures were of little boys mimicking the same behaviours? I'm still in the air about this, I think I need to think about it a little more. :)

It disturbs me too, for a couple of reasons. Obviously FB makes no sense. A friend of mine who is a brilliant artist has had her FB page taken down several times because of its erotic content, they said her art was offensive. (To me, the only offensive art is bad art, but even that is subjective.)

If your FB account is private and all your settings are adjusted so that absolutely nobody can see your pictures without your consent, then I don’t see any problems. Kids are going to emulate what they see at home, little girls will try on high heels and makeup, and little boys will practice shaving.
(And little boys will try on high heels and makeup, and little girls will practice shaving, but I digress.) The problem comes with the way people use FB. I regularly see people using pictures of their children as their own profile pic, leaving their photo albums open to all even though their wall might be private. I think that’s a mistake on so many levels, but if you want to share pictures of your drunk and disorderly self with the world, that’s your decision. Posting pictures of your kids anywhere on the internet needs to be considered very seriously.

And yes, I’d be worried about people sexualizing the pictures of little girls breast feeding their dolls, but the truth is that a simple Google search of “little girls breast feeding their dolls” turned up a kazillion images that are available to anyone with a computer, as well as plenty of information about “the breast milk baby”, an $89 doll that comes with a special halter top with two flowers positioned where nipples would be, and makes “lifelike” suckling sounds.

More on the doll here: http://thebreastmilkbaby.com/

Controversy about the doll here:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/breast-milk...2#.TxMNsoFJCSo

And this subject makes me think of this:

Kids pretending to breast feed is fine in my book. It's a good thing, maybe they will breast feed their own children one day. Posting pics of it is another matter.

I would like to talk about another aspect of this issue. Breastfeeding dolls and breastfeeding in general. A little girl picking up her doll and putting it to her breast is one thing. And a little kid who wants to breast feed her/his doll certainly has that option. However designing a doll whose main purpose is to make sucking noises while attached to flowers on a halter top your kid is wearing feels like a whole other ball game. It harkens back to the day when people believed a woman’s real job was as a baby factory and just naturally assumed she would get with a guy and drop some babies. It’s like training for little girls to assume their proper societal roles. It is not only gendered but biologically deterministic. Of course all toy dolls further perpetuate gender roles. That can’t be helped. And to a certain degree is fine. However a milking doll takes biology to a whole other level. With all the subtly of a train wreck it reinforces societal beliefs that little girls and women are biologically inclined towards child rearing and nurturing behaviors. According to proponents of these dolls, they teach nurturing skills to little girls. I think we have always focused on teaching nurturing skills, often confused with passivity and compliance, to our female offspring. How about a little nurturing skills for our boy children? I mean since when is nurturing behavior only a good thing when done by a woman?

Another problem I see with breastfeeding dolls is how it helps to reinforce the established belief that breast feeding is the normal way to feed a baby. I understand that it is the accepted best way to feed one’s child. The benefits of breast feeding make it the good choice. It’s just that it ends up sounding like breast feeding is the only choice for good mothers. And to chose convenience instead makes you a bad mother or at the least a selfish mother who puts her own needs over the needs of her child. WIC, a program that gives assistance to women in need, has decided it can cut back on infant formula making it only supplemental because women should just breast feed. Again others are controlling women’s bodies and telling them what they should be doing with them.

I believe breast feeding should be a socially accepted act. Currently it is seen as impolite at best in the western world. Maybe it’s because women’s bodies are too much viewed as sexual rather than functioning. Women’s breasts are seen as sex objects that need to be hidden away. So while I agree breast feeding needs to become more publicly acceptable, I am talking about women breast feeding not little girls breast feeding. Little girls strapping on flower nipples to breast feed their sucking dolls just seems fraught with biological determinism and a healthy degree of ickyness.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Especially seeing the web site for these dolls says this:

Why Little Girls Need to Learn to Breastfeed

Little girls need to learn to breastfeed. Berjuan Toys, the company that has always supported the development of small children by producing interesting, engaging dolls, continues its tradition with the release of this innovative baby doll, The Breast Milk Baby.

The Breast Milk Baby lets young girls express their love and affection in the most natural way possible, just like mommy! The Breast Milk Baby represents a revolution in design by teaching children the nurturing skills they’ll need to raise their own healthy babies. Just put on the fashionable top included with each Breast Milk Baby, bring the baby’s mouth up to the pretty flower, and enjoy the closeness, the loving bond between mother and child.

The United States Health Resources and Services Administration has made it a national goal to have at least 75% of all mothers breastfeeding for at least six months by 2010. The Breast Milk Baby will help to reach that goal by helping to accept and promote breastfeeding as the most loving, healthy practice for a mother and her infant1.

Breastfeeding isn’t just a wonderful practice for the health of the infant. Mothers who breastfeed are more likely to return to their former weight before childbirth, and have a reduced risk of breast cancer and osteoporosis for the rest of their lives2. The Breast Milk Baby helps mothers and children get the most out of life, while spending less time and money at the doctor’s office!

Thanks for this. It is bringing my concerns into a better focus.

Perhaps if more little girls were to appreciate from a very young age the real reason why they are different to boys when it comes to their chests, then more little boys would appreciate it too and not grow up thinking that breasts are nothing but things to play with when they're older.

I think the dolls are great. Would I put up a picture of my daughter, were she younger, playing with one on Facebook? No, but then I wouldn't put up a picture of her anyway, the reason being that I truly believe that in the wrong hands, even the most innocent of images - a young child reading a book, for example - can and will be sexualized.

Words

I think that is a good point. The natural function of breasts are not to be toys for boys or anyone for that matter. Breasts are more than things to play with. Unless of course you don't have children. It's okay not to use them as baby feeders... ever. Just like it's okay not to use sex as a tool for procreation. I guess a healthy middle ground is good. It just reminded me of some things I hear from some of my mother's very religious friends about putting the emphasis on the function of sex, you know to create another life. I'm just wary.

Seems to be a lot of Facebook/breastfeeding controversies going on lately. I don't see anything wrong with women breastfeeding in public or putting up pictures of themselves breastfeeding on social media sites. I think this North American perspective of breastfeeding = bad is pretty fucking horrible. I think it says a lot about the extent to which North American society sees women's bodies as strictly sexual objects. There is nothing shameful about breasts or women showing them in public, and nothing shameful or "obscene" about women breastfeeding in public.

That said, those women are adults who have children and have made the decision to breastfeed their children. I see it differently when it comes to young girls. Showing images of young girls pretending to breastfeed on public sites seems a lot like something that could go terribly wrong, whether in attracting sexual predators/endangering them, or by propagating ideas on raising children in "proper"/traditional gender roles.

While agree that society teaches young girls to view their own bodies as sexual objects (and boys viewing women's bodies as sexual objects), I also agree with what MissTick said about women being brought up to see their bodies as baby-making machines/boys to see women's bodies as baby-making machines. Too many young girls are brought up by their families under the assumption that she will one day have her own child, and if she expresses that she has no interest her family will often tell her that it's a "stage" and she'll "grow out of it." If she doesn't her family "worries," they might even talk to a mental health professional about it. Women/girls who do not want to bear children/be mothers are seen as "unnatural" or "strange" far too often in our society.

To me a doll like that seems an awful lot like a toy company trying to reinforce gender roles, and the stereotypical female role of "mother" and "nurturer." But people who are assigned female at birth are far more diverse than that. Not all women want to be mothers or see "the real reason they are different to boys when it comes to their chests." There are women and girls who see their breasts as nothing to do with breastfeeding and motherhood, and would prefer not to have their breasts thought of that way. Who see their breasts as for their own pleasure, for their own pride, empowerment and self-perception, and nothing to do with reproduction and motherhood. And what about women who can't breastfeed or don't have breasts? Are they being told they need to breastfeed in order to be a mother? That they can't be a mother?

That aside, what makes a parent decide to buy their kid a doll like that? Considering how many trans children or non-normative children (and here I mean any child who simply doesn't view their own bodies in a way that revolves around reproductive roles) who are assigned female at birth are brought up being forced into gender roles, this seems like yet another toy to reinforce stereotypes in children who want nothing to do with those stereotypes. Is this toy for children who truly want it, or more a toy for parents to "make their little girls more like mommy"?

I think there are better ways to teach children that women's bodies are not sexual objects than by giving them breastfeeding dolls.

That's just my two cents.

Calling a woman's breasts "baby feeders" is gross. Almost as gross as the amount of money formula companies have spent and made convincing American women that their bodies are incapable of feeding their child.

It's not a gender role to encourage nurturing, it's a human trait we need to encourage in all of us. Nurturing doesn't make a child weak or passive.

It's adults that assign gender suitability to toys. A child playing with a baby doll is just that: a child playing with a baby doll. Why would we assume that a transgendered child would not play with a baby doll? The child chooses the toy, as the wand chooses the wizard.

i think it's weird that we think it's weird. i also do not see breastfeeding as a private act. Intimate? yes sometimes. Private. No. Is eating private? Is it private when a baby is gobbling down jars of baby food?

EnderD,

I get what you are saying...kind of. Thing is, why all the fuss about these particular dolls? There are peeing dolls on the market, dolls with pacifiers, dolls that walk, dolls that talk, dolls that don't do anything...All of which could be seen as reinforcing the idea that most young girls will eventually be/want to be mothers.

I just think, to quote Martina, that it's weird that we think it's weird, because to me, that feels like it's us who are doing all the sexualizing.

Words

hate me if you will, but frankly I do not like breastfeeding in public. I dont need to defend myself here but I will say this: if I am sitting in a restaurant I dont want to watch a woman suckle a child. If I am in a theater, at a party, anywhere in public, I dont want to see this activity. If I am in someone's home or even if they are in my home and its time for baby to be fed, then by all means, breast feed. I changed my daughter out in the LR when she was a baby. I surely wouldnt do that in public. You can tell me its wrong to show genitals in public but not wrong to show a woman's breast in public and i will counter that its not her breast that bothers me, its about the "time and place" for certain acts.

and I wont engage in arguments about this. its how I feel and you can feel your way and neither of us has anything to do with whether or not jane Doe is going to feed her baby in public.. thats HER choice and I will fight for her to have that right. Even if its not what i would chose to do, nor want to see in public, its still HER right. my feminism is higher priority than my personal value laden proprieties.

BUT I do have concern with images of children on the cyberland. There are some strange fiends out there and I can see some of them constrewing the natural act of a child modeling breastfeeding into sexual erotica.

I know its meant to be sweet but images are never safe once they are in cyberland. I saw a doctored photograph of two elderly women where someone very skillfully made them barebreasted while they were drinking coffee in a restaurant. Another woman, who had elephantitus, was plastered all over this one site as the twinkie girl...making her medical abnormality into a bullyfest against an overweight girl. Did those elderly women or that woman with elephantitus every dream their photos would become beacons of ill humour on social networks? No! If they do that with simple photos, god help photos of children suckling dolls...

frankly, I wouldnt put any child's image in cyber until laws catch up to the technology leaps...

Newborns eat at least every four hours. Unless you want to force new mothers to stay home, they are going to have to breastfeed in public. It's always the time and place to feed a hungry baby. Unless you want to keep nursing mothers out of public spaces, it's always the time and place to breastfeed.

My response to people who don't want to see it is -- don't look.

Almost all states protect a mother's right to breastfeed.

People who feel uncomfortable about it and show that discomfort are the problem. No one should ever do anything to make a woman nursing in public feel self-conscious. She is doing the very best thing for her child.

i truly don't care what the source of some people's discomfort is. They really need to just not show it.

i even think that people ought to really hesitate before they share IN PUBLIC their feeling that seeing a woman breastfeeding bothers them. A nursing mother might hear. Or a woman who will be nursing at some point could hear. The states have made the decision, and the courts have upheld these laws time and again. It's over. There is no reason to make a nursing mother feel in any way like she has to worry about what others think. She doesn't need the stress. Nor does her baby.

<sigh> if only i could quadruple like this!! :rrose:

I don’t have any problem with a women breast feeding in public. None. Not even any. Not even a hint of any. Nope. However, I do believe whether or not to breast feed one’s child is a mother’s decision. Pressure to make her feel like a bad mother or a selfish mother because she chooses, for whatever reason, not to breast feed is problematic to me. I have a problem when WIC makes the decision for mothers needing assistance by not making enough formula available for them to do anything but breast feed. I have a problem when the United States Health Resources and Services Administration makes it a national goal to have at least 75% of all mothers breast feeding. Especially since the only mothers they can really control are those needing assistance. Feeling that a woman should have the right to choose not to breast feed does not mean that I don’t feel comfortable with breast feeding anywhere or anytime. It means I feel uncomfortable when controlling or coercing the choice of what to do with a woman’s body becomes the target of society and/or the government. A woman should have the right to choose what to do with her own body. And I get that a good many people, some of them even women, do not agree.

And I feel that breast feeding dolls are just over the top. There are tons of dolls that do all kinds of things. We don’t need breast feeding ones. Contrary to what the makers of these dolls are saying, I don’t believe a little girls needs to learn how to breast feed when she is 5 or 6 or 7 or whatever. It’s a tool to perpetuate society’s need to uphold gender roles and biological determinism. And I don’t agree with the argument that little girls need to learn to nurture. All children should learn nurturing skills. It’s time we focus a bit on ways to help boys learn this skill.

Many, many moons ago, when my daughter was a baby, I was living in the Middle East and still wearing full hijab. To let anything above the ankle, wrist, or neck show was considered taboo and yet wherever I was, and I mean wherever I was, I was comfortable enough to breast feed (albeit whilst carefully covering my breast with a shawl/scarf). Nobody looked. Nobody commented. Nobody cared. This, in a predominantly Muslim society where the majority of women covered the greater part of their bodies to 'protect themselves' from the natural inclinations of men (as some would have us believe).

The reason that nobody looked, commented, or cared is the fact that men in that society, from the time they are born until the time they die, are exposed to the act of breastfeeding and attach no sexual connotations to either the act itself or women's breasts, in that context, whatsoever. As a result, when they see a woman breastfeed in public, they not only accept it, but deliberately avoid looking in her direction out of respect not only for her privacy, but also for the act in which she's engaged. It's a beautiful thing to observe and something that never failed to touch me in one way or another.

My point? I'm not sure I have one. It just seemed kind of relevant.

Words

Also I think the only ones sexualizing breast feeding whether done by children to dolls or adults to babies is Facebook (because of the weird way they have of categorizing things, not from any personal feeling about it) and of course perverts who troll the internet looking for things that they have fetishized and sexualized. Little girls breast feeding i'm sure falls under that category for someone. And "Facebook has a history of categorising photos of breastfeeding as 'obscene content' but even they seem to agree since they apologized for removing them, pics of little girls breast feeding dolls is not obscene. I think it is disturbing for many reasons which I touched on in this thread, but I don't find it obscene or sexual in the least. Sexual and obscene is when mothers dress their little girls in slinky gowns, high heels and make up and have them parade around encouraging them to shake their booty in order to win beauty pageants. These things must be like amusement parks for sexual perverts.

The objection I have to little girls having dolls suck at flowers attached to their chests is not one of a sexual nature. I do think that the reason people have problems with adults breast feeding babies in public is because the breast is highly sexualized. More breast feeding in public may eventually help people see breasts as body parts with important functions outside of recreation. And I'm certainly all for that. Little girls breast feeding. Not so much.