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Originally Posted by MaryJaneLouise
 Exactly. This was an op-ed piece -written to be inflammatory and to navel-gaze at her and her upper crust New York City peers. Newflash -- you are not a medical scientist, you are a journalist, and upper middle class NYers are not the center of the universe.
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:I am hone sick today, so have been laying in bed spending some "quality time" with my laptop and MDC.
The more I read and think about this article, the more I think it is in the same category as celebrity lifestyle bogs. It just doesn't apply to most of us. Though many of us may live in NY or DC and many of us may be upper middle class, not too many of us are upper middle class, educated white people living in the Northeast.
I personally have never been in a situation in which I felt like someone was looking askance at me for breastfeeding nor have I ever been present when someone was judged for bottle feeding. Who are these phantom playground moms and why would you care what they think? It is kind of like the advice mom gives you in junior high about not caring about the judgment of people who would judge you on superficial things or without really knowing you.
I personally do about a trillion parenting practices that would curl the hair of many MDC mothers. Probably the crunchiest among us take sour kids to McDonald's, or gives our son a BB gun, or lets them watch American Idol or something. Nobody perfectly conforms to any ideal. That doesn't mean I go to the playground, see two moms using some baby-wearing device, announce that I am sick of using a sling and intend to get a stroller and playpen ASAP and then get offended if someone looks at me funny. Even while home in bed, I can't imagine wasting time publishing an article so that I could justify my parenting decisions that people who are neither close friends or family members may or may not disagree with. I just don't think most people care that much.
Until there is some sort of public policy that is truly stopping women from FF when they choose to, this sort of article is just bourgeois self-indulgence. Also why I am a New Yorker nut but have never described to the Atlantic--it just isn't as good.
