Attachment Parenting Cover Mum Reveals Son, Four, Has Stopped Breastfeeding

Attachment Parenting Cover Mum Reveals Son, Four, Has Stopped Breastfeeding
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Jamie Lynne Grumet, whose Time magazine cover in which she struck a model pose while breastfeeding her three-year-old son, has said he has self-weaned and is 'done' with breastfeeding.

Jamie, 26, ignited a a massive debate on attachment parenting after the magazine hit the newstands in May. She had hoped that Aram, now four, would feed until the age of five.

She revealed in the original Time article that she was also still breastfeeding her then five-year-old son Samuel (now six), who was adopted from Ethiopia in 2010. Samuel has also self-weaned now.

Supporters of attachment parenting - a method that encourages parents to sleep with young children in their beds, extend breast-feeding beyond toddler years and adhere to other techniques to help develop parent-child bonds - were upset by the negative publicity.

The Big Bang Theory actress Mayim Bialik has written a book about how she breastfeeds her three-year-old son and allows her six-year-old to sleep on a mattress on the floor in her bedroom. Singer Alanis Morissette, who is mother to Ever, two, has also defended the method, asking critics: "What part of it is gross?"

But Grumet also attracted fierce criticism from the opposite end of the parenting spectrum, from those who felt it inappropriate to promote public breastfeeding.

Jamie, who is married to police officer Brian, was photographed standing aloof while breastfeeding Aram who stood on a small chair to reach her.

The provocative image, which was accompanied by the headline: 'Are You Mom Enough?' ignited a debate on the 'right' age for a mother to stop breastfeeding.

"Look, I'm not an advocate of breast-feeding, but I'm an advocate for normalising it," Jamie said.

"I think a lot of people wanted me to be crazy or extreme," saying she received offers to be on reality shows, and handfuls of calls regarding prospective book deals or product endorsements.

"It was so ridiculous. You just don't make money off of being an advocate or activist. That would be really, really wrong and hurtful to what we were trying to do," she said. "A reality show? That would have been exploitative, for sure."

Jamie wrote in her blog: "Motherhood is hard enough then to hear constantly how you are caring for your child is 'weird' or makes people 'uncomfortable' is almost too much to handle."

She claims that the cover image chosen was an 'outtake' from the shoot, and looked 'confrontational and detached'.

In an effort to make her point clear, Mrs Grumet posed for the cover of Pathways to Family Wellness magazine, this time with her husband and both sons.

She told Today.com: "It was important for us to pose and say, 'Hey, if we had creative control [with the TIME piece] we would have done it like this.'"

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