This Photo Of A Mom Breastfeeding On The Toilet Pretty Much Sums Up Motherhood

Do you want to stir-up the masses? Show a photo of a mom comfortable breastfeeding. Throw in some tampons and a toilet for good measure.

Life of Dad posted a photo of a mom who appears to be breastfeeding her child on the toilet to their Facebook page. You could almost hear the collective gasps from the corners of the internet. Except from those of us who know that it can be absolutely impossible to get even a second to yourself when you have a young child following you around the house like a tyrannical shadow.

Here’s the photo:

This image sums up parenting a small child perfectly, even if you’ve never breastfed. If you are one of those parents who managed to never have your child follow you into the bathroom, maybe you should write a self-help book. Because for the rest of us, this is normal. My bathroom door doesn’t have a lock on it and I can’t remember the last time I took a trip to the bathroom that wasn’t narrated by my toddler.

It’s amazing how many people are chiding her for breastfeeding in her own bathroom, when women are routinely asked to be discreet and breastfeed in public bathrooms. People are saying things like, “Would you eat while using the toilet?” Personally, no. But I’m not 15 months old. Does this picture qualify as “overshare?” Probably. But Life of Dad is a parenting site, and this is one of the most real images of parenting I’ve ever seen.

There will always be pearl-clutching involved when a woman appears comfortable breastfeeding. People are less disturbed by images of sexualized breasts than they are of ones that aren’t sexualized – it’s a fact. We just haven’t been exposed to much real imagery of women breastfeeding. (No, stock photos of women breastfeeding in fields of flowers don’t count.) But new photo policies on Facebook and Instagram allow women who are comfortable sharing images of themselves breastfeeding to do just that – without fear of being censored or having the image removed.

I don’t think I’ve ever breastfed on my toilet, but I look at this image and can totally relate. There’s not a whole lot of privacy when you’re parenting a small child. Life is messy. Oh, and women use the bathroom, too.

This is real. And as with everything else on Facebook — if you don’t like it, just keep scrolling.

Related post: What’s Hard About Covering Up To Breastfeed?