So there’s this photo (below) that’s been trending on the web for days now – photo of one Ms Karlesha Thurman, 25, breastfeeding her baby during her
graduation from California State University Long Beach. It was supposed to
be just a sweet shot captured by a fellow classmate of a beaming mother
with her 4-month-old daughter but the photo has since become the most recent battleground about the propriety of breastfeeding in public..
“I found out I was pregnant my last year of college, had my daughter one week into my last semester, she was my motivation to keep going, so me receiving my BA was OUR moment, so glad I captured the moment and so glad you shared it with the world so thank you again. ” Karlesha wrote |
“I do not care how natural breast feeding is, a college graduation is not the place…decorum, people,” tweeted @theSilentGiant.
“I never said not to be proud, but breast pumps exist for a reason!
Middle of graduation is not the time to whip breast out,” read a post
from @urQuel_5dawg.
Kalesha Thurman said she didn’t post the photo to get attention, and it’s
since been deleted, but she said she doesn’t understand what the big
deal is about the photo.
“Nobody there had a problem with it,” Thurman told ABC News about her
breastfeeding during her May 22 graduation ceremony. “I was facing the
other graduates. The crowd couldn’t see me.”
Her daughter, Aaliyah, was hungry and needed to be fed, she said.
“I was proud of the fact that not only
did I graduate but that I got to share the moment with the one person
who is the most important to me and that is my daughter.I honestly thought that as a society,
people were more understanding to breast-feeding and understood the
importance of breast-feeding.It’s not disgusting, it’s not a bad
thing, it’s not a negative thing. It’s the best thing for my daughter.
More people should do it.I did it to show it’s natural, it’s
normal, there’s nothing wrong with it. I didn’t even know there was a
big controversy about breast-feeding in public until all of this
happened.”
says she will not stop breast feeding. “The connection that you have
when you’re breastfeeding your child, it’s unexplainable.”
Molly Peterson, manager of Healthcare for Lansinoh, told ABC News that breastfeeding in public shouldn’t be a concern.
“This was a beautiful natural expression of a mother’s love for her baby,” Peterson said.
“Seeing pictures like this is something that normalizes it so that
more mothers are able to feed their babies whenever, and wherever, they
need to,” Peterson added.