Time magazine attachment parenting breastfeeding cover stirs up controversy, apparently

Los Angeles mother Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, the suckle-provider in question, is part of feature on attachment parenting.

Grumet breastfeeds both her three-year-old and five-year-old sons and says that she herself was breastfed until she was six.

Attachment parenting is a theory which advocates that mother and child spend an incredible amount of time toogether, from wearing your baby constantly in a papoose to sleeping together in a single family bed.

Dr Bill Sears, the 72-year-old who developed the idea in the early Nineties, believes it gives children self-confidence and reassurance, whereas some psychologists believe it gives the children a disproportionate sense of their own importance.

Unfortunately the public debate about the cover has, more broadly, been along the lines of MSNBC's reductive (if popular) poll, whose 77,000 respondents were offered the peculiar binary of: 'I don't really want to see that' or 'it's great, with 73 per cent of those polled voting for the former option.

The most rational comment in the whole debate has perhaps come from Grumet herself, who said on MSNBC's Today programme: "It's a big commitment and it's not right for everyone. Do what's best for your family."

A sentiment we can surely all get behind.

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