On HuffingtonPost Live, The Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik offered her opinion about a controversial parenting topic. She advocates and defends a woman’s right to breastfeed her children anywhere she feels necessary.
In the interview, Bialik explained how breastfeeding involves some intimacy that makes several people uncomfortable, but it’s not a sexual act. “Our culture has a very, very bizarre relationship with breasts. Breastfeeding is not a sexual act. It’s an intimate act, and that makes some people uncomfortable, but it’s completely normal to have all of the human hormones that are released when you breastfeed regulating your relationship with your child,” states Bialik. She also gave her views on how the world tends to sexualize not only female bodies, but male ones as well. Bialik believes the world obsesses over sexualizing things.
In 2011, Bialik received backlash after she posted a picture of her feeding her then three year old son Fred on a New York City subway. Despite the criticism, Bialik defends her actions, and any mother who wants to do the same. On her blog Kveller, she, along with other writers, express their opinions and insight on a variety of parenting issues, especially pertaining to attachment parenting, a method of parenting that allows the child to lead. It encourages bonding through such actions as co-sleeping and breastfeeding. She credits Kveller with providing “a safe place for me to speak up to the thousands and thousands of women who parent this way who get people harassing them all the time, and people looking at us funny in every department store or wherever else we nurse.”
In the original blog post, she further addressed the issue by stating, “I never ever believed that I would be nursing a child over the age of 3. But now that I am, I believe when he is done, he will be done. I believe that he will not need to nurse before he walks down the aisle to greet his bride under the chuppah, and I believe that nursing is natural and beautiful and wonderful. I believe in being conscious of where I nurse my toddler and I also believe that there is nothing wrong with nursing Fred.”
Bialik has two sons, Miles, 8, and Fred, 5, with ex-husband Michael Stone.
Image via Mayim Bialik, Twitter