We all remember that TIME front cover photo…
And Jamie Lynne Grumet, the breastfeeding mum in the photo, would prefer if we didn’t.
The woman, who posed on the cover of TIME breastfeeding her three-and-a-half-year-old son, has slammed the magazine for its portrayal of her, and attachment parenting.
The mother-of-two spoke out to ABC and said the photo she saw wasn’t the one they were trying to pose for.
“My intentions were to help relieve the stigma attached to breastfeeding past infancy, but the photo I saw wasn’t the one that we were trying to pose for. It made me really, really sad.”
The LA mum said that the cover image was an ‘outtake’ from the shoot, which when placed alongside the words ‘Are You Mom Enough?’ looked “confrontational and detached.”
“I definitely don’t agree with the cover, and I don’t agree with the article,” she said.
Jamie Lynne posed (or didn’t) with her son Aram on the TIME magazine cover.
To get her side of the story across, Mrs Grumet decided to pose on the cover of this month’s Pathways to Family Wellness Magazine, which supports the idea of attachment parenting.
The cover of this magazine shows her seated, breastfeeding her son Aram while her husband Brian and adopted son Samuel look on. In contrast, the TIME cover showed Aram standing on a seat to reach her breast as she faced the camera.
Mrs Grumet said the new cover portrays the idea of toddler breastfeeding more realistically by including her family and explaining the practice in a way she had expected the TIME article would.
Jamie Lynne was breastfed by her own mother until she was six years of age and said she will not stop breastfeeding her toddler until he turns five.
Attachment parenting isn’t just about extended breastfeeding, it is a parenting style that includes co-sleeping with a child and constant skin-on-skin contact. Mrs Grumet said she wanted to use the Pathways to Family Wellness Magazine to show this part of parenting too.
Photographer Lori Dorman, who snapped the family for the second magazine cover, said Grumet was trying to “the misperception that was created on the TIME cover”.
The photographer said; “Its message was that nursing a three-year-old was outrageous and inappropriate, when in fact nursing a three-year-old is a normal, healthy activity in the world today.”
Mrs Grumet said that she preferred the way Pathways to Family Wellness Magazine addressed the theory of attachment parenting and was disappointed with the reaction TIME’s coverage had provoked worldwide.
Jamie Lynne with her family on the cover of this month’s Pathways to Family Wellness.
She wrote on her blog; “The publication interviewed me a couple of weeks after the TIME cover and decided to deconstruct the cover and display breastfeeding past infancy in an authentic way.
“The bizarre attention from TIME was still going strong when we agreed to do this shoot, but we knew we were in good hands.
“The article is wonderful, we really are so thankful that there are non-profit magazines like Pathways trying to educate people about conscious parenting.”
“There are people who tell me they’re going to call social services on me or that it’s child molestation”, she said.
“I really don’t think I can reason with those people.”
“There seems to be a war going on between conventional parenting and attachment parenting. That’s what I want to avoid. I want everyone to be encouraging. We’re not opposing teams. We all need to be encouraging to each other and I don’t think we’re doing a very good job at that.”
Singer Alanis Morissette recently revealed that she will continue to breastfeed her son Ever until he tells her he wants to stop.
Speaking on Good Morning America, the singer, 37, tackled the debate on attachment parenting, addressing the effect of the Time magazine cover, and the stages of ‘appropriate’ childhood development.
Are you in agreement with attachment parenting?
