according to the catholic encyclopedia, included among the duties of parents towards their children:
The mother is bound to do nothing to prejudice the life or proper development of her unborn infant, and after birth she must under pain of venial sin nurse it herself unless there is some adequate excuse.
so if you can, you must? am i reading that correctly? and if so, wow. that should get babytalk's readers foaming at the mouth.
Did you happen to notice that this post closely resembles the one above?
You may now delete this comment. I mean the one above. And this one too.
Well, that's bound to turn a few heads. I am all for breastfeeding, but a venial sin? Hmmm.
But look at the copyright date on that article: 1911. In 1911, there wasn't an adequate substitute for breast milk. You could mix up a formula yourself from goat's milk and honey and other things, but if the baby wasn't being fed mother's milk, mortality went waaaaay up.
With an adequate substitute such that the child's life isn't overtly jeopardized (and don't give me the statistics--I understand many children do die due to bottle-feeding that wouldn't have died with breastfeeding) I don't know if the "sinful" nature of the act of putting formula in a bottle would necessarily hold true. :-)
And again, before I get flamed, I've been breastfeeding for eight of the past nine years, and my current nursling is 2 1/2 years old.
I kind of agree with Jane -- I'm very pro-breastfeeding, but if someone had suggested to me that it was not only a cop-out but a *sin* to quit when my firstborn was struggling and I was struggling and the meds had not yet started to pull me out of my deep, dark, sinister, horrible pit of depression, I think I would have clocked them. ;)
the declaration reads "unless there is some adequate excuse" which suggests to me that there need be only a reasonable excuse. i certainly would agree that ppd or baby's inability to thrive an adequate excuse.
i assumed that reasons stemming from an already sinful nature, perhaps of sloth or vanity (potentially sagging breasts or the ability to go on a slimfast diet right away), would constitute venial sins. and still, it rubs against the feminist grain of the keep-your-rosaries-off-my-ovaries-my body-my choice mentality.