We kept very still as the tiny bird fluttered above our table in the coffee shop courtyard yesterday, periodically swooping to peck up scattered cake crumbs.
Gradually, it grew bolder, alighting on the plate itself with a tentative hop before fleeing, then back for longer, this time dipping into the dregs of raspberry jam. It was so close I could see the way the sticky residue clung to its beak like shiny red glue. On the empty seat opposite, a baby bird perched on the wrought iron back, waiting, mouth open expectantly as the mother flew backwards and forwards, depositing crumbs and jam into its tiny beak.
There was something enchanting about the scene: the tenderness and trust of the mother and baby relationship; the gritty pragmatism of survival, of seizing an opportunity when it presents itself; the deep, unassailable sense of responsibility for the open mouth and the need to care. Sitting watching in the sunshine, my mind drifted back a few days to a news item about the Dutch airline, KLM, issuing a statement regarding mothers on flights. “We may request a mother to cover herself while breast feeding,” the statement said, “should other passengers be offended by this.”
Offended? What right does anyone have to be offended by a mother feeding her child?
I can be on a plane sitting next to someone drooling over a page 3 girl and have no right to ask them to cover it. I can walk into a garage and see flashes of pin-ups in the work area but have no right to ask them to remove them while I am in for my car’s service. Indeed, I can see more bare breast on display in Charlize Theron’s slashed-to-the-navel gold dress in a Dior perfume ad than I am ever likely to see with a breastfeeding mother.
But because Theron is beautiful, has the gloss of fame and the power of Dior’s dosh behind her, nobody suggests her breasts are offensive and should be completely covered.
Sometimes, human beings forget themselves. In our supposed “sophistication”, we are at our most primitive, a veneer of pretence over the reality of our lives. The hypocrisy of this whole thing was underlined for me when it was reported this week that an advert banned from the buses in Birmingham for being sexist has appeared in the city on a billboard instead. Accompanied by a picture of a blonde, it says, “Your wife is hot!” It’s for air conditioning servicing.
We are quite content to use the human body to sell everything from perfume to engineering, happily over-sexualising breasts for commercial reasons but getting shirty when they are used for their intended purpose. It doesn’t make sense. Whether we prefer to forget it or not, we are, after all, a species of animal, sharing many of the same instincts as other species – feeding our young being a prime example.
We can – fortunately – create a substitute for breast milk but it isn’t as good as nature’s version and why pretend it is? Breast feeding protects babies from infections, sudden infant death syndrome, childhood leukaemia, obesity and cardiovascular disease. For women who breastfeed, it lowers the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. Yet, for some reason, when we talk about being “offended” by breast feeding there is precious little talk of its medical importance.
In any case, most women who breastfeed in public do so discreetly and there is rarely anything to see unless Mr – or Ms – Outraged in seat 8E wants to stare intrusively, determined to be shocked. So many expectations– big and small – have influenced the achievements of women over the centuries. (Try, for example, being physically active, innovative or creative dressed in a corset and crinoline. It’s an achievement just to keep breathing).
But few things have held women in place quite like childrearing, and few female accomplishments have been quite so unnecessarily downgraded – or have been quite so successful in keeping women isolated. Regulate ‘em like the air con and keep them at home…Since the World Health Organisation recommends children are breastfed for at least two years, women could be a long time stuck out of sight.
The day the birds fluttered round my table, I received a call from my son on the way home. He’d been to see the new version of Disney’s ‘The Lion King’, a film he’d been obsessed with since seeing the original version. We laughed together at the memory of that first viewing. Everything had seemed normal when the film ended but twenty minutes later in the car, no longer able to be ‘brave,’ he had turned his little face into my winter scarf and cried at the death of Mufasa and the idea of losing a parent. Some things matter in life and some things don’t and those moments of parenthood are very special. Bonding is a process that begins in infancy whether it is birds feeding their chicks, or humans feeding their babies. Offensive? Quite beautiful, I would say.
Catherine Deveney is an award-winning investigative journalist, novelist and television presenter
