Sharon Spink, 50, with her 9-year-old daughter Charlotte. (Photo: Mercury Press) By Beth Greenfield , Yahoo Lifestyle T...
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Sharon Spink, 50, with her 9-year-old daughter Charlotte. (Photo: Mercury Press)
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The topic of breastfeeding,
for better or worse, remains a controversial one — especially when it
comes to discussing how long it should go on. It’s particular
controversial if you’re Sharon Spink, a British mom who has been
speaking out about how she let her daughter nurse until she was 9 years
old.
“When
I came to have Charlotte, I had decided on natural term weaning. It’s
nice for the child to be in control of when they want to wean, rather
than forcing the issue,” Spink, 50, an actor based in North Yorkshire,
England, told the Sun, after sharing her story with the Caters News Agency and having it picked up in global outlets, from the Daily Mail to the New York Post, similar to what happened in 2014 when she first shared her story about nursing her then-5-year-old.
Spink,
who’s also a mom to three older kids, said she wanted to break the
stigma around extended breastfeeding — a concept that’s been promoted by
celebrities including Mayim Bialik and Alanis Morissette and has raised angry criticism in the public realm many times over the years — perhaps most notably in 2012 when the cover of Time magazine
featured a 3-year-old boy standing on a chair to breastfeed from his
defiantly posed mom. It was part of a feature package around the rise of
attachment parenting
— a method with three main tenets: co-sleeping, baby-wearing (that is,
slings rather than strollers), and extended breastfeeding, all as ways
to bond and “attach.”
Later came stories about moms who breastfed their 4-year-old and 6-year-old, and one who said the plan was to continue until her daughter was 10 years old,
all prompting criticism that veered into accusatory, sexual-based
territory, as it has this time for Spink, who said her daughter
self-weaned just a couple of months ago. In response, she has been
called a “pedophile” on Facebook, where one of the many stories about
her and Charlotte had been shared 6,000 times.
Others called the situation “freakin weird,” “nuts,” “perverted,”
“selfish,” “sick,” “bizarre,” “child abuse,” and “unnatural.”
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Sharon Spink and Charlotte, who self-weaned just a couple of months ago. (Photo: Mercury News)
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But for all the attacks on Spink, there were also many strong defenders, at least one of whom called her an “inspiration.”
“Wow
what a fantastic amazing woman achieving nearly a decade of
breastfeeding… What an amazing bond they must share,” noted another.
“Shame something so natural is frowned upon in this day and age.”
Another chimed in with, “A woman breastfeeding her OWN child is wrong
because the child isn’t a baby, but it’s totally okay for adult humans
to drink the milk of a mother cow? Jesus Christ, human beings are weird
sometimes.”
And
there was this heartfelt reply to Spink’s critics: “Society judgment is
disgusting. You do realize that the world health organization recommend
to breastfeed a MINIMUM of two years… Why do you feel the need to judge
her?”
Spink
did not immediately respond to questions from Yahoo Lifestyle about why
she decided to go so public with her story or about whether or not her
daughter has been teased about it. She did, however, respond to a
similar question posed by someone on her Facebook page, writing, “She’s fine & her school friends are so nice. There’s never been any bullying.”
The
biological age of weaning for the human species is between 2.5 and 7
years old, according to research by a Texas A&M University
anthropologist, with the average being 4.3 years. In the U.S., where
most moms stop breastfeeding much earlier, the CDC reports
that 57 percent of babies are still nursing at 6 months (25 percent
exclusively through 6 months), and fewer than 36 percent of babies are
still being breastfeed at 12 months.
Leigh Anne O’Connor,
a New York-based certified lactation consultant and leader of an
extended breastfeeding support group, tells Yahoo Lifestyle, “It is
cruel that people are calling this woman a pedophile.” She notes that
while she’s never personally worked with anyone who breastfed for as
long as Spink has, she supported a woman who breastfed her child until
age 6 and knew a woman whose children all nursed for about 8 years.
“Nine years is older than the biological norm, but it is not unheard
of,” she says.
“It
can be challenging when the world sees nursing a toddler and
preschooler as weird. And I imagine this mom is met with amplified
criticism,” O’Connor adds. “Western culture has a complicated
relationship with breasts. We flaunt them to sell cars and beer, but
when breasts are used for feeding babies and children, people get
uneasy.”
Although
some commenters have speculated that Spink could no longer actually be
producing milk, O’Connor says that she could. “It is possible that she
is producing milk this long. Many moms make milk for years — they may
nurse through a pregnancy and nurse both kids and keep making milk as
long as their breasts are stimulated. It is also possible that there is
very little milk and the nursing is for comfort.”
Responding
to a question about the presence of milk posed to her on Facebook,
Spink responded, “Only way I knew there was milk there was because
Charlotte would tell me there was.”
In
any event, O’Connor notes, there’s been no published research as far as
she’s aware that mentions any risks to a child who nurses for this
long. But the benefits, she adds, are the possibility of Charlotte
having a boosted immune system, as well as the mom’s enhanced
“connection with her daughter.”
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