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The best way to feed a baby
• JACQUELINE Castles is mistaken in her diatribe against public breastfeeding (Letters, August 27).
Public breastfeeding can be carried out discreetly. Although breasts are persistently considered sexual within our culture, such feeding is not a sexual or bathroom act. It should not be compared with urinating or fornicating in public.
It is not narcissistic; it is the generous and loving act of feeding a hungry infant. A baby does not know when it is appropriate to feed and whether its need will cause offence. It represents more than feeding, being also a bond between mother and infant. I wonder if the naysayers envy this powerful bond.
It takes hard work to establish breastfeeding successfully. Mothers who persist with breastfeeding, either privately or publicly, are in a minority. It takes courage to face the resentment of those who have a personal issue with breasts and breastfeeding in general, and disguise this as a question of public decency.
ANA BEARD
Address supplied, N13
• LONG ago, I lived for several years in a place where public breastfeeding was normal.
I was born in a country where public breast-feeding was emphatically not normal and where film stars were being used in a campaign to promote large breasts as erotic symbols.
In Africa however I found myself feeling warmed and comforted by the sight of feeding mothers, as if I was the baby!
It is not for nothing that medieval and Renaissance works of art, with titles such as Mary with the child Jesus (in the religious style of those times) sometimes show Mary feeding the baby.
The act of feeding a helpless and needy infant is a biological prototype for the practice of compassion.
DAVID FORBES
Lamble Street, NW5
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