Besides the lesson that children of any culture can be cruel (my own 8
year old cries at teasing, too, and at Sunday School last week did so
when told that he didn't come out of a mother's tummy, he came out of a
spaceship) it shows that a lot of peer pressure revolves around sex and
gender issues, where biology and culture comes together. That is why the
acculturation of breastfeeding is so complicated. Julia Kristeva wrote
about how the mother figure is the one in which biology, culture,
society, language, psychology and everything else come together. I was
hoping to use the mother's tummy as a picture of what is common to
humanity -- we are all of woman born, as Adrienne Rich writes, and it is
interesting that things like nursing teddy bears, using tools and
carrying dolls in a tummy (my two-year-old put a doll down her top the
other day, and I wondered if this is what she is doing, but then the
next day she put a piece of chicken down there, too) would be subject to
taunting.
Someone said -- and I think I posted it -- that the suicide pilots and
their cell-crews were no more typical of Middle Easterners (or Muslims)
than Timothy McVeigh was of Americans (or Christians). That is one of
the things that we have to remember to teach our children: that we are
all the same and different, and that there are people in every group who
do the wrong thing.
At least we hold in common one important belief: that breastfeeding is
the right thing, though no guarantee that the breastfeeders will do the
right thing every time.
Jo-Anne

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