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Mother nurses her child in church. The stained glass window of Lansdowne Church in Glasgow, Scotland by Scottish artist, Alf WebsterAs a mother of three children, all of whom I nursed in church, I would like to share my perspective on breastfeeding.
A factor I see coming into play with regards to breastfeeding in our culture is the over-sexualization of women. They are constantly depicted as objects of men’s desire, for their pleasure, rather than as coequals in Christ. Since men in our culture are constantly bombarded with sexualized images of women, including pornographic images, I can understand their knee-jerk reaction to viewing a woman’s breast, as well as those of a protective husband who does not wish to have another man lusting after his wife. Men have been conditioned to responding to a bare breast in a lustful way through this media bombardment.
However, I would like to propose that allowing women to breastfeed openly in church is a way in which the dignity of woman can be reclaimed. For the very dignity of woman is in her ability to give of herself. There is a very special grace given to women in that only they have the physiological ability to give over her very own body to the growth and development of a human child.
The very act of nursing an infant is a sacrifice. Believe me, after nursing three children, they don’t always cooperate with a woman’s desire for modesty nor do they time their demands to suite a mother’s convenience. Viewing the act of a mother nursing an infant provides the opportunity to explore an image of self sacrifice that God encoded into our very DNA.
Each person’s human dignity and wholeness is rooted in our ability to give of ourselves. We are called to follow Christ’s way of the cross. We are called to live his life, death and resurrection. “No greater love has anyone than to lay down their life for another.” Nursing by its very biology is a laying down of one's life. It takes a tremendous amount of physical energy to nurse a child. In the act of breastfeeding a woman is making her body available to nurture another life that is completely dependent on her. She has to die to herself again and again in order to respond to the constant needs and demands of a breastfeeding infant. Any woman who has breastfed knows the sleepless nights and the patience required to be available around the clock. She is familiar with how much time in her day ends up being devoted to a child who’s demands necessitate her constantly setting other priorities and tasks aside in order to care for the needs of her infant.
If pastors could be more open to exploring this image of self sacrifice, they could be influential in desexualizing the image of a woman’s breast and putting the men in their congregation at greater ease. Possibly men could even find that by understanding the purpose of breastfeeding in God’s design as a picture of His sacrificial love, they could reprogram their responses to images of women’s breasts, and in turn gain a greater appreciation of the dignity of the woman as created in the image and likeness of Christ.
The Holy Family by Luca Signorelli, 1490Ruth Engelthaler is a writer by trade and is in the process of transitioning back into her professional career now that her children are older and her youngest is becoming self-sufficient. Engelthaler holds an MA in creative writing and enjoys research involving mothering and women's dignity issues within Catholicism.
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