The Boy was born in 1975 and spent the next year or so periodically attached to his mother's breast. Back then, there was only one café that served real coffee: Bewley's, which was accordingly a Dublin landmark. If you got there at the right time, you could scuttle into a 'booth' with high seat backs and have pretty good privacy. We were once summarily ejected from Bewley's for feeding The Boy, who really wasn't into coffee and cherry-buns at that age. The eviction notice was served by a hatchet-faced waitress who conveyed the message with far more disdain that the infringement warranted. We were very young and meekly left the premises.
Ireland has the lowest rate of breast-feeding in the EU, with only 56% of mothers trying it at all at all; falling off to a mere 6% still suckling at 6 months. The rate wasn't any higher 40 years ago. The spirit may come upon me later to write about the insanity of not using the ould chest appendages for their evolutionary purpose.
This sort of nonsense is still going on and not just in Ireland.
A mother was discretely feeding her infant in a courtyard in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and was told to "
<frisson!> cover up please Madam" by one of the fonctionnaires. ERROR! because the lactator
@Vaguechera was a twitterer with a fine sense of irony:
That's pretty funny because yer wan is snacking from a cornucopia. And it is by no means the only example of bared stone bosom in the V&A.
My mentor was fond of summing up Ethics with "
Your rights end where my nose begins". Now we extend this to "
Your rights end where my breast begins" or more accurately "
Your rights end at the back of my feeding infant's head".
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