Meet Aram Grumet. He is one month shy of four years old and he breast feeds. To illustrate a feature package on attachment parenting, Time had Aram stand on a chair and suck his mother's teat while gazing into the camera. The resulting photo will soon be on every newsstand in America.
When I saw this cover, I initially assumed Time had taken a page from Newsweek's stock photo fetish porn playbook. Between Time's boob suck and Newsweek's S&M and royal necrophilia, the waiting room at your dentist's office is now a danger zone for twisted Freudian arousal.
But Aram's photo is not simulated. He is a real boy, and his 26-year-old mother Jamie Lynne Grumet really breastfeeds him and his five-year-old brother. Jamie herself breastfed until age six. As I type this, an unwanted image of multigenerational human centipede breastfeeding has entered my mind and will not leave.
by Maureen O'Connor
