Oh boobs!

Apparently, some Mormons are getting really upset about women breastfeeding in church.  Props to the women who are fighting this ignorance, and double props for the cool name: Latter-day Lactivists.  What’s the big deal?

Now, I used to be uncomfortable around women who were breastfeeding when I was hormonal teenager, so I get that.  That is largely the result of young men who have sexual urges not having good sex education and healthy sexual outlets – like masturbation and porn.  But my discomfort with breastfeeding women, which never led me to tell a woman to “put it away” mind you, is completely gone since my wife and I had our son and she breastfed him.  She fed him all the time.  And I stood up for her right to breastfeed him when the occasional person would give an odd look or even family members would ask if she might be “more comfortable in another room.”  (Nope, she’s fine right here, playing cards with all of us.)  She breastfed him on planes, on boats, on trains, on buses, in cars, in stores, in restaurants, in parks, pretty much every where we went.  (Never church; she doesn’t go there anymore.)  Most of the time, no one said anything.

So, why would adult Mormon men and women have such a problem with women breastfeeding kids?  Is this all about sexual repression in Mormon culture?

And I loved Peggy Fletcher Stack’s last line in the article, which is a partial quote from Jenne Erigero Alderks:

If motherhood is an LDS woman’s highest calling, she says, “get out of our way, and let us follow our conscience on how best to do that.”