Suckling at the Government Teat

Time magazine’s newest controversial cover shows a child who’s definitely not an infant, a baby, or even a toddler – that is to say, a child that has teeth, that can eat, walk and use the bathroom on its own somewhere between late 3 and 4 – suckling at the breast of someone whom we assume is his mother.

Once, on vacation at Club Med, I was sitting at the American table at one of CM’s Caribbean resorts. I was sitting with a group of Texans from Texas. A French father sat down with us. He had a very pretty little girl of four with him. We were glad to speak with some of the French; generally, they avoided us and being on French territory, it was hard to avoid the French. Americans were in the minority. 

As we spoke with him, he took the girl into his lap and proceeded to give her a bottle. The Texans were appalled. Having cared for many children, I was appalled. Suckling is for toothless babies, my mother has always said. Once they grow teeth, they can eat on their own. Once they can walk on their own, they can use the bathroom. A child with a full set of teeth suckling at your breast…ouch! Pere, we concluded in English, definitely had an attachment problem. We also concluded that one day, fil would have a problem. But that was the 1980s.

Rush Limbaugh rightly pointed out on his program yesterday that we should ask ourselves, ‘What is wrong with this picture?’ Incidentally, congratulations to Rush for having his bust placed in state capitol of Missouri, Columbia. He says the Liberals and Conservatives are battling about his bust being placed in the hall of fame in Missouri. The Liberals object because they know their “busted.”

Well, to return to the other busts. Rush asks why would Time place such a photograph of breast-feeding, portraying a child obviously too old for the practice suckling at his mother’s bosom? Certainly, the photograph would cast breastfeeding in a negative light and Time being a Liberal magazine, and Liberals casting themselves as champions of such public practices, publishing such a picture would be counterproductive, would it not?

It would; unless you’re trying to cast aspersions on motherhood. The cover asks “Are You Mom Enough?” Both Rush and Glenn Beck on his TV program noted that Stalin and Hitler, while giving orders of damehood to mothers, actually frowned on motherhood as a full-time occupation. In Russia, particularly, mothers were encouraged to warehouse their children and go off to work to produce for the commune.

The photo is counterintuitive to proper notions of motherhood. The object of parenting is to raise children, that is, to let them grow up. You care for them only as long as they need attendance. Mom’s (and Dad’s) job is to teach their progeny to become independent. This child on the cover of Time is a poster child for Obamacare’s extended health insurance for children up to the age of 26.

Juvenilization of our youth is a definite Socialist goal. Unweaned, cossetted children remain immature longer. They’re less likely to take risks, risk-taking being a requirement for taking strides towards independence. Instead, our government would have parents coddle them indefinitely, until they become men- and women-children, at which point the government will assume the role of parent. Cradle to grave: that’s Socialism.

There’s a time and a place for everything, even breastfeeding, if a mother chooses to do so. Time magazine has the first amendment right to place a breastfeeding mom on its cover. Although it makes right-thinking people of all sorts squeamish, the photograph makes a double point about motherhood and Socialism.  The photo is socialist propaganda at its most pernicious (and painful).

It’s enough to give freedom-loving Americans colic.