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Shalom, Get Outta My Home!
Posted by | Posted in Somebody's Mom | Posted on August 22, 2006
Rabbi Shmuley of TLC's "Shalom in the Home" has been banned from my house due to this:
With this particular couple, the situation was even worse. Their sex life had died completely, and one of the main causes was the mother's obsession with breast-feeding well into the child's eleventh month. The baby was attached to his mother like a limb, and he even slept with her every night, consigning her husband to a different bedroom.
I told the mother that in being so devoted to her son, she had committed the cardinal sin of marriage, which is to put someone else before her spouse, even if that someone is your child. Furthermore, I said, her obsession had turned one of her most attractive body parts into a feeding station, an attractive cafeteria rather than a scintillating piece of flesh.
...
In the end, there are two effects of breast-feeding that we often refuse to acknowledge. One is the de-eroticization of a woman's body, as her husband witnesses one of the most attractive parts of her body serving a utilitarian rather than romantic purpose. This is not to say that breast-feeding isn't sexy. Indeed, the maternal dimension is a central part of womanliness. But public breast-feeding is profoundly de-eroticizing, and I believe that wives should cover up, even when they nurse their babies in their husband's presence. (I'd like to just slap his face off for that comment.)
I believe this same problem comes up when men witness childbirth up close. There are certain poses in which a husband should not see his wife. By all means, be there for the entire labor, as I have been for the births of each of my eight children. But I strongly agree with the advice of the ancient rabbis that husbands should not be staring at the actual delivery. That is just too erotic a part of a wife's anatomy for it to become a mere birth canal.
I am just staggered by this kind of thinking. My husband helped pull Freya from the birth canal. And from the expression on his face and from the things he has said about that, I think he'd pretty much take that experience over any sex he's ever had in his life. In fact, he might trade it for all the sex he's ever had in his life.
I'm just not sure what Rabbi Shmuley thought breasts were for in the first place. I love over on the comments section of the article where one responder asks what he thought the Israelite babies ate while their families were wandering in the wilderness...
I had no idea the Shalom guy was so backward thinking.
Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
I have alot of opinions about what he said but this is your blog.
That guy is NUTS!!! Even anything breast feeding made my husband more mesmerized by my boobs and while it takes happy parents to raise happy children---there is nothing wrong with putting your child's needs ahead of yours especially while the child is still a baby. UGH!!!
That's a pretty old-school philosophy there. And that's exactly what we men need - another dofus male making the rest of us look like idiots.
What an idiot! A woman's body is designed to feed her child after giving birth. Good for you to ban that joker from your house. Women have a hard enough time finding support for breastfeeding, especailly for longer than two months. It's a shame that this jack-ass is allowed to make comments that will make it even more difficult to nurse. I nursed all three of my girls for a year each, and don't regret one feeding. Neither does my husband even though he was second in line to use the boobs, wink! He even called me DairyQueen!
This is a rather odd passage you quoted. To me, it sounds like he has a bit of personal bitterness going on. Either way, he�s managed to categorize a relationship between husband, wife, and child, as �you or me,� or �my child or me.� Selfish, if you ask me. He even goes so far as to transfer that approach onto the wife of his example; consigning her husband to a different bedroom. If that were the case, then yes, any husband would feel put off.
I remember when my wife was pregnant. I remember how with each passing month she became more beautiful and, yes, sexy to me. I�m certainly not saying that she wasn�t beautiful or sexy before or since our pregnancy; just that it was a different, yet no lesser attraction. It was the sort of attraction that is singular and synonymous to two people being outrageously in love and creating a baby.
I never felt snubbed or pushed aside or sexually muted. Instead I--we--felt more attraction. It�s difficult as hell to explain. That being said, I certainly would not have felt the same had I not actively participated in the whole thing.
I believe that real love is a selfless thing. The Rabbi isn�t equipped to know what love is because, apparently, he�s too selfish.
I�m just saying.
wow. well, um. i don't watch his show but i had the impression that he gave good advice. i guess not.