There are certainly lots of good criticisms to be made about attachment parenting and probably lots of interesting things to say about the impacts of long-term breastfeeding on a marriage, but “Eew breastfeeding is gross” is not one of them.
As Amanda points out, the problem here is the sexless marriage, not the breastfeeding. And the root of that problem seems to be that James Braly sees sex as something for men. As Amanda puts it, “He frames sexual desire as something only men have, and sees women’s bodies as machines that serve the needs of men and/or children. The possibility that women could also be frustrated and unhappy when cut off from sex therefore doesn’t occur to him.”
This is probably where I diverge a little bit from some feminist writers, but I do think that in a long-term romantic/sexual relationship, ideally both people make a reasonable effort to meet their partner’s needs — including sexual needs. That doesn’t mean that one partner is obligated to have sex they don’t want, or that a woman’s breasts are shared property; it does mean that even if you have a child, your relationship with your partner needs care. It means making time for sex in a long-term relationship. It means being open to your partner’s sexual desires, and being open with yours. And it means being frustrated in a sexless marriage (or with extended co-sleeping or breastfeeding until the kid is 5) doesn’t make you a bad person.
Unfortunately James Braly sounds like a total dick, and I feel bad for his wife, and he does kind of come across as a bad person with really disturbing views of sex and biology (I definitely would not want to be sleeping with someone who thought I was basically doing sex for him). But it would have been nice to see a decent take on the impact that attachment parenting can have on a marriage when it becomes a barrier to intimacy, or an article about how attachment parenting very much feeds into traditional ideals about women existing to serve and sacrifice for their children, or a piece on how sharing a bed with a kid until the kid is in third grade really puts the kabosh on sexytimes. That wasn’t this piece. This piece was James Braly whining about boobies. And his complaints and his presentation were terrible, but there’s a little nugget of truth buried somewhere deep in there.
Are a woman’s breasts hers? Yes, of course. Are they sometimes for feeding babies? Yes, of course. But they’re also sexual and often an integral part of a couples’ sex life. Breastfeeding for five years can be a real issue; denying that isn’t particularly helpful. And the comeback always seems to be, “But breasts aren’t for my husband! My breasts are mine! They’re for feeding a baby!” But well, yes, of course, but also no. Breasts are yours — they’re also for your own sexual pleasure, among many other purposes. And they can be for feeding your baby. But breasts-as-sexual doesn’t have to be a male-centered, male-serving thing. Unfortunately in these discussions, breasts are inevitably framed as “for” someone else — “for” a baby if you’re breastfeeding, “for” a man if they’re involved in your sex life (heteronormative phrasing intentional there — no one seems to ever suggest that a lesbian woman’s breasts are “for” her partner). And just, no. A lot of women like sex too. And if your marriage is sexless and one partner is unhappy about that, then something has to give. I imagine that it’s rare where both partners are 100% happy in a sexless marriage (I’m sure it happens, but it’s unusual); I imagine it’s also rare where one partner in a sexless marriage is totally happy and the other is miserable. Usually these things cut both ways. Which is why Braly’s piece was so obnoxious — his wife’s feelings don’t even register, other than he assumes that while he’s biologically driven to want sex, she’s biologically driven to want to breastfeed a five-year-old, and so they’re at odds.
There are real problems with schools of thought that don’t take into account whole-family health, and instead focus entirely on the myriad ways a woman can sacrifice for her children. Parents do what they need to do, and for a lot of families, some attachment parenting techniques work. That’s great. But the whole philosophy was spelled out by a right-wing misogynist who saw women’s “natural” roles as mothers and servers of children; his view, basically, was that women should sacrifice everything for their kids and center their entire worlds around those kids, because that’s what good women do. In my view, that’s not particularly good for women or for kids (have you met adults who grew up believing they were the center of the entire universe? They are not pleasant or well-adjusted people). That said, most parents use some hodge-podge of parenting techniques that seem to work best. Some of them seem pretty crappy — and of course they are, because some of anything people do is pretty crappy, being that we are all just human beings — and some of them do seem to insist that EVERYTHING THE KID NEEDS gets placed far, far ahead of anything that the parents need. I’d be interested to read a thoughtful take on how hyper-child-centric methods of childrearing have damaged the parents’ relationship with each other (and whether that even matters, or if putting kids first is so important that a marriage that can’t withstand it isn’t worth having in the first place).
But the Braly piece wasn’t that. It wasn’t a critique of mother-martyrdom, or a look at how these practices can alienate husbands or destroy a couples’ sex life. It isn’t about much more than how Braly’s own wife should also sacrifice for him — as if sex is a “sacrifice,” and something that good women do in order to serve the kings of their castles. And I’m sure when his wife sees her body described as repulsive in the New York Times and reads all about her husband fantasizing about cheating on her, their sex life will greatly improve.