Has anyone else seen the most recent Newsweek?  I was at my doctor's
office today (the only time I can read the mainstream press with a clear
conscience) and the cover caught my eye.  It's about "your child's
brain". I scanned the whole article, which is fascinating in general with
info about brain and cognitive development, and the importance of
parent-child interaction, but two things immediately caught my
eye.  First, there is no apparent mention of breastfeeding in the whole
article (I
plan to actually thoroughly read it before I claim that's absolutely true),
and secondly the first page contains the following sentence:

"He <the baby> cries at night; you feed him, holding his gaze because
nature has seen to it that the distance from a parent's crooked elbow to
his <sic> eyes exactly matches the distance at which a baby focuses."

I don't have *major* objections to the use of the "generic" male gender
for the baby, but this seems to me to be a very inappropriate use of the
generic male gender for the feeding parent!!

(Just wanted to bring my fellow letter-writing zealots' attention to this...)

--
Anne Montgomery, M.D.
[log in to unmask]
Olympia, WA