Mayim Bialik opened up recently about “attachment parenting”, which she practices, and says that because she’s an actress and in the public eye, strangers think it’s okay to confront her about her choices.
Bialik, who was a child star on the hit sitcom “Blossom” before moving on to more adult fare like “Big Bang Theory”, has two children and says she educated herself about the process of attachment parenting–which includes holding a baby or carrying him in a sling rather than using a stroller, allowing the child to sleep with the parents, and long-term breast feeding–before making the decision that it was right for her. But with public breast feeding having become such a hot-button issue in recent years, the idea of nursing past a certain age runs the gamut of emotions for many, from disgust to curiosity. And those things lead to awkward questions.
“Obviously the notion of an older child nursing is very strange to some people. In certain cultures it’s not. And I was very careful about when and how I chose to breastfeed my older child. I put a lot of boundaries and limits around it and again took the guidance of women who had sort of walked this path before me,” Bialik, who weaned her son from the breast when he was four, wrote on her blog. “I think the notion of breastfeeding at all is still very controversial in some circles.”
The actress says she’s not looking for a fight, although many people who approach her are.
“If I’m talking to girlfriends, if I’m talking to random people, and we’re talking about parenting, I tell them what works for me and why. But a lot of people want to ask me things so that they can fight with me,” she said. “And just because I’m a public person, who happened to have breastfed and slept with her kids, that doesn’t mean that I want to fight with you on the street or in the supermarket. So, I think you have to be really careful to understand why people want to know what they want to know.”
