couples

Last night, two million people saw this woman breastfeed.

Last night a mum breastfed her toddler backstage at The Voice Australia. And apparently, this is still not okay. 

You have to be kidding that this is an issue right?

A woman breastfeeds her toddler on (wait for it.. gasp) prime time TV.

No you haven’t entered a time warp back to 2003. This happened just last night. It is almost unbelievable that its getting column space but it is.

So what’s the deal?

Well on last night’s episode of The Voice a contestant’s wife was filmed in the Green Room breastfeeding a young child. It occurred straight after the contestant, Dallas James from Byron Bay, performed his rendition of Sam Cooke’s Bring It On Home to Me.

What SHOULD have been making tweeters indignant, bemused and outraged is that there IS a breastfeeding debate.

We’ve all been there – a child so hungry the only way to soothe her is with whatever comfort item they seek. Whether it be a dummy, a bottle or a breast. You shove it in, in sheer desperation sometimes, just to get a moment’s peace and quiet.

It’s a long stretch to say that this moment was planned, schemed, dreamed up by Producers to score headlines. Any Mum knows that most probably little Tashi was screaming his tiny head off exhausted, hungry, tired, and over stimulated all at the same time. The lights, the cameras, the people, Dad on national TV, the excitement.

And the fix – the only fix at that particular time was exactly what works for that Mum at that time.

ADVERTISEMENT

It’s a public debate we have heard time and time again. In 2003 Victorian Labor MP and new mother Kirstie Marshall was asked to leave State Parliament because she was breastfeeding her 11-day-old daughter. In 2007 there was outrage when Kate Langbrook breastfed her newborn live on national TV. Even last year Gisele Bundchen, the highest paid model in the world came under fire for sharing a photo of herself feeding her one-year-old daughter, Vivian, while simultaneously getting her hair styled, her nails manicured and her face made up.

But let's hope things really are changing for the better.

Earlier on this year Pope Francis told mothers to “not think twice” about breastfeeding at church and in public. Italian politician Licia Ronzulli has been routinely captured feeding her infant in parliament.

Hopefully we are just starting to see it as something to which most of us wouldn’t really blink an eye at. I find women mainly groan at the idea of a “breastfeeding debate” these days. Most Mums I know couldn’t give a fig what another Mother is doing to keep her child happy, as long as it works for you and your child the majority of us couldn’t really care.

So good on you Channel Nine if it was a carefully orchestrated piece of breastfeeding propaganda. But surely it was just a brief glimpse of the reality most of us deal with on an everyday basis.

Seriously, do you think there's anything shocking about a woman breastfeeding on TV.