'I understand some of the breastfeeding advocates are actually upset.' | AP Photo/Time Time's cover mom defends picture

The mother featured in Time Magazine’s provocative breastfeeding cover photo stopped by the “Today” show on Friday with her son to discuss the “media craze” sparked by the controversial image.

“I understand some of the breastfeeding advocates are actually upset about this because I feel like [the photos] don’t show the nurturing side to attachment parenting. This isn’t how we breastfeed at home,” Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, said as her three-year-old son Aaron sat in her lap. “It’s more of a cradling, nurturing situation. And I understand what they’re saying, but I do understand why Time chose this picture because it … did create such a media craze to get the dialogue talking.”


Grumet told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie “we knew exactly what we were going to get into” by appearing in the article and photo, although she acknowledged the firestorm around the magazine cover went beyond her expectations.

Grumet, who practices what is known as attachment parenting and herself was breast-fed until she was six, added that she doesn’t feel like being with her child constantly — including having him sleep in her bed — takes away from her personal life.

“You know, my relationship with my husband is very, very important to me and I think that it gives my children a strong bond, too,” she said. “So I think a lot of people say, you know, you can’t really be, you know, intimate with your husband if you’re co-sleeping and that’s just — I mean those are kind of myths, too.”

Grumet added that her son Aaron is self-weaning now, and she hopes this will be the last year she breastfeeds him. “It’s not right for everybody. You need to do what’s best for your baby and your own family,” she added.

Dr. Bill Sears, who Time magazine dubbed attachment parenting’s “guru,” also appeared on the show and told Guthrie the practice is “not extreme.”

“If you were on an island and you had no mother-in-laws, no psychologists, no doctors around, no experts, this is what you would naturally and instinctively do to give your baby the best investment,” he said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), a cosponsor of the Breastfeeding Promotion Act, weighed in on the controversy set off by the Time cover photo.

“The science is clear that breastfeeding is good for the growth and healthy development of babies,” she said in a statement to POLITICO. “As a matter of workplace fairness, women who’ve chosen to nurse should have a discreet, private space to do so when they’re back on the job — that’s why I co-sponsored the Breastfeeding Promotion Act.”

“But the decision over how long to breastfeed – and whether to breastfeed at all – is an intensely personal one that each mother needs to make for herself. Parenting is hard work, and it can be done well in many different ways. It’s not the job of the federal government to tell families how to do it,” Woolsey added.

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