You have to feel for the Duchess of Cambridge. Not only is she the most watched pregnant person on the planet (now that Kim Kardashian has given birth), already the British press is trying to give Kate unsolicited parenting advice, urging her to breastfeed publicly the royal baby.
“(We) need women with power and influence to get their milky bosoms out and feed smiling in paparazzi pictures. Celebrity is depressingly powerful in dictating trends,” wrote Beverley Turner in The Telegraph.
Jeesh. The baby isn’t even born yet, and already poor Kate is being pressurized to do this, do that. Becoming a mother is stressful enough. I say let her find her own way. With any luck she will breastfeed her child, but it is no one’s business what she chooses to do with her ‘milky bosoms.’
According to an article in Today Moms, Turner is a mother of three who nursed her own breastfeeding struggles, “calling it a brutally difficult process.” So you’d think she would know better.
Of course Kate must be aware of how important breast milk is for babies. I doubt this glaring fact could have escaped her. Turner clearly feels that a royal role model is what’s needed to stop dwindling rates of breastfeeding in the UK.
“We’re also rapidly losing any sense of normality about breastfeeding due to powerful cultural forces. Young mums are especially unlikely to breastfeed: it’s not cool; it’s not sexy and their boyfriends won’t like it,” Turner wrote.
Kate is due in mid-July.
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