Messages By: annipoo

 First I want to share this experience:  Once, I was at the mall and very nervous about breast feeding in the food court because there were a number of teenage gentlemen at the next table.  They happened to be Hispanic.  Not one even looked at me in an out of the ordinary way.  My  lunch companion pointed out that in their culture breast feeding is normal!  How come I can drive on the interstate in North Carolina and see adds for "Dockside Dolls" with women in almost nothing, and people take offense at breast feeding in public?  Before I gave birth to my first child, I decided I wanted to breast feed.  I thought I could just schedule feedings and make sure I was home (ha!)   Well, needless to say reality set in quickly.  I did always cover up and at first usually left the room.  I fed my child in storage closets and bathrooms in restaurants.  Soon I decided that if I got to go out to eat, I was not going to sit in a closet or bathroom for thirty minutes.   I always covered up with nursing tops or my t-shirt.   Sure, people might have caught a brief glimpse of my breast if they were staring, but once the child is nursing, the breast is covered anyway!   Needless to say with my second child, I never breast fed in a bathroom or closet. 

On the topic of condoms in schools, I have this to share.  I once had a young woman in my freshman college course who became ill.  She found out later that she had an early stage miscarriage.  A few weeks later, she started turning yellow.  When the student health services sent her to the hospital with Hepatitis, she was scared to death--she had never even heard of hepatitis.  Perhaps if she had not come from a county in my state, North Carolina, where the sex ed. pages of the health book had been cut out, she may have been able to prevent her fate with some basic knowledge.  Sex education is desperately needed in the schools.  Education is power.  Whenever knowledge is kept from people, ideas get confused.  Yes in a perfect world, parents should teach their children about sex, but it is obvious that they don't.  Condoms should not just be thrown at the kids; they should be given education with them.  Parents should be given the school's curriculum about sex ed. so that they can discuss what they believe with their children at home. 

Strangers should not discipline other people's children in public.  If you don't like something my children are doing, feel free to tell me.