I had an interesting discussion on Reddit today about breastfeeding based on a Philip DeFranco tweet





Best part of being a Dad is I can do almost anything and people are like OMG YOURE THE BEST DAD IN THE WORLD!!! I’m like...for making my son a PBJ? Meanwhile my wife who does 90% of the work can tweet how she needs an hour for herself to recoup and people will try to shame her.





I replied

Also, the same people that say I'm a good dad for just being in public with my daughter are the ones that complain about my wife breastfeeding said daughter

I got a ton of positive replies to this, but I got one interesting negative reply (since removed by /r/wholesomememes moderators).





The gist of the reply was that breastfeeding in public is the same as pulling your penis out in public. I assumed the commenter was a childless man/boy with no real life experience as far as breastfeeding goes. My response went as follows:





I understand where you are coming from, but a couple things.



Breastfeeding women need to get milk out of their breasts frequently or they risk pain, reduced milk production, or a dangerous infection. Requiring/pressuring women to hide their breastfeeding increases the chances that they will switch to formula (not ideal for the baby) or avoid social situations (not ideal for mothers).

America is unusual compared to other countries (even those with similar or higher standards of living) when it comes to breastfeeding in public. This probably stems from a couple generations being trained that breastfeeding is primitive and formula feeding is superior (which is now known to be definitely untrue). If countries with otherwise similar cultures to us can handle women breastfeeding in public, so can we.

I understand that it can be distracting when there is a chance you may see a nipple in public and that it takes self control to not stare at. I really do. However, this is simply a muscle you can work out. We used to require covering of women's knees and ankles but over time, we as a culture have gotten used to that. Whether women and men should be allowed to be in public in all nature of undress is a separate issue, but in this case where there is minimal exposure as a result of an important and irreplaceable biological need of a child, I believe the owness is on us to ignore (or move to another spot) rather than a mother to stop feeding her child.

More and more research demonstrates the benefits of breastfeeding to both mother and child. The only way to gain these benefits is to reduce barriers to breastfeeding. It is already a physically and emotionally difficult task that often involves pain and feelings of failure. Adding shame to that hurts everyone, and pressuring women to not feed in public is shaming.

The whole thread was removed, but I hope that he got to see the reply, and was willing to take a moment to address why he responded the way he did.