Health: Local woman's new book on Breastfeeding older children in public - The ‘eewww! crowd’

THE sight of a woman unbuttoning her blouse to breastfeed in public has many people shielding their eyes in shock.

Now imagine that child is four, seven or even a teenager.

Bit creepy? A little weird? Taboo?

The sexualisation of women’s breasts, a very western preoccupation, is explored in a new book by health writer Ann Sinnott.

She said: “We live in a hyper-sexualised culture where breasts are used to sell everything. A child has a right to breastfeed in public. It is a human rights issue. These strong feelings that are expressed over breastfeeding in public are not our own – they reflect the prevailing culture. It is only really in some western cultures that breasts are not seen in terms of their primary function – to feed children.”

Ms Sinnott, who lived in Primrose Hill for 20 years, has made an impassioned and scholarly defence of Breastfeeding Older Children. She asks why, if children want breast milk, do parents wrench away the teat? What, if any, are the lasting psychological effects?

 “If a child wants to continue, why do we stop them?” she said. “Part of my problem with it all is that so little research has been done. 

“I do not think the government makes the realities surrounding breastfeeding well known. Medical practitioners tell women that there is no nutritional value. That is absolute nonsense. It has a lot to do with parental anxiety and social pressures. Breastfeeding should not be a lifestyle choice.”

Ms Sinnott says comparisons between breast and manufactured milk are “nonsense” and that the “hidden phenomenon” of breastfeeding older children is frowned upon because it goes largely unreported. “I think the internet has helped,” she said. “Women have recourse to much more information and support.”

Ms Sinnott’s book investigates evidence that the act of breastfeeding helps produce and nurture oxytocin (OT) – “the hormone of pleasure or enjoyment”. Breast milk is also “awash” with OT, she writes, evidence that sustained breastfeeding brings a baby “years and years” of natural happiness. Sub-sections of her book are devoted to “primordial joys”, women’s history, feminist theory and how breast-feeding entails the “closest mother-infant bodily contact”.  

While little research has been  done to prove the lasting benefits to children who are breast-fed for long periods, Ms Sinnott believes they are more likely to grow up to be more rounded individuals, safe in the knowledge they are “worthy of care”. 

She says her own daughter, now 18, was “not shy at all” and was “extremely bright”.

Ms Sinnott decided to write the book after breastfeeding her daughter until she was six and half years old. Cue gasps of astonishment from the “Eewww! crowd”, as she describes them.

“I was a single mother so I never had any of the pressure from a partner,” said Ms Sinnott. “I’m not making my voice heard to make women feel guilty. 

“I do not want women to be coerced into breastfeeding. I wrote the book because I believe in the truth and that people should make informed decisions.” 

• Breastfeeding Older Children is available at Free Association Books