The Huffington Post

“No. I am not Mom enough.

Not as TIME magazine seems to define it on their outrageous cover today. The one showing the willowy bombshell of a mother, staring defiantly at the camera, while her 3-year-old son stands on a chair next to her, the better to suckle at her exposed breast.

I am not Mom enough to take the bait. To accept TIME’s deliberate provocation and either get mad at this woman for what I think I know about her from this photo, or to feel inferior, or superior, or defensive, or guilty — or anything at all, if it means I am comparing myself to other mothers.

I am not Mom enough to think that the debate over how to feed our youngest children — an important and nuanced conversation about nutrition, and workplace policy, and government responsibility, and gender relationships — can be boiled down to a simplistic, unrepresentative, staged photograph.

The breastfeeding conversation is not titillating. The TIME cover is.”

—Lisa Belkin: No. I Am Not Mom Enough