Mother Knows Best

Dear Rabbi Boteach,

Instead of blaming mothers for nurturing their children, you should tell the fathers who have a problem with breastfeeding that being jealous of their children just makes them juvenile and whiny. It also makes me wonder if they are even adult enough to be parents, if they cannot put the needs of a helpless being ahead of their own. Perhaps you could encourage them to become more involved with their children instead of seeing them as rivals for attention?

Magic Always, T.

P.S. Your comment that men should not be there for the birth of their children because it turns an "erotic a part of a wife's anatomy" into a "mere birth canal" has to be one of the most misogynistic things I have read in a very long time. (And I've read some pretty bad stuff lately.) Birthing is, and always has been, a strong and spiritual moment for women, and your attempt to trivialize it would be degrading to all women - if we believed you in the first place. The attempts of patriarchal religion to denegrate/destroy women and their bodies has gone on for centuries and we're just not willing to listen anymore.