Opinion / Opinion Line

Criticism of mom feeding baby draws public ire

(China Daily) Updated: 2015-12-01 08:49

Criticism of mom feeding baby draws public ire

This photo of a woman breast-feeding her child attracted much criticism when it was posted to the Weibo account of bjtale.com. [Photo/weibo.com]

A NON-governmental organization posted a micro blog criticizing a young mother for breast-feeding her baby on the subway in Beijing. The post provoked a storm of anger directed at the NGO. Rednet.cn agreed the NGO, Peking Past, was in the wrong:

Many people have witnessed the scene of a young mother anxiously looking round a subway carriage expressing her unspoken awkwardness to the other passengers when her baby starts crying.

If it was not an urgent situation, it would not be the first choice for the mom to breast-feed her baby in such close confines in public.

The maternal instinct was described by the NGO as the woman exposing herself in public, which was unreasonable and unacceptable. It only reveals the unprofessional conduct of the organization.

The question should be why the woman's breast-feeding her baby bothered it so much. Did someone find it sexual? If so, whose fault is that, the mom and baby or the person who views it like that?

If the organization wants to hide such scenes, the key issue is how to improve the public facilities in Beijing's subway stations so that young mothers have somewhere to feed their babies.

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