'Time' breast-feeding cover heats up on social media

Social media are buzzing about the provocative Time magazine cover showing a Los Angeles mother breast-feeding her 3-year-old son.

The story is on "attachment parenting," a trend that, Time reports, has been on the rise over the past two decades. Attachment parenting includes extended breast-feeding, co-sleeping and "baby wearing," where infants are physically attached to their parents by slings.

The image is trending on Twitter, sparking debate about how old is too old to breast-feed and if the photo is beautiful or disturbing.

Actress Alyssa Milano, who had a baby last year, tweets "@Time no! You missed the mark! You're supposed to be making it easier for breastfeeding moms. Your cover is exploitive & extreme."

@Jennandtonica tweets: "Hey, moms. It's up to you to join these made-up Mommy Wars, not Time Magazine. There's no war if you don't allow one."

For the feature story, Martin Schoeller photographed four real mothers from across the country who practice this method of motherhood.

"When you think of breast-feeding, you think of mothers holding their children, which was impossible with some of these older kids," Schoeller says. "I liked the idea of having the kids standing up to underline the point that this was an uncommon situation."

Schoeller said he was looking to capture various attached parents and their reasons for attachment parenting in his shoot.

One of the mothers, Dionna Ford of Kansas City, Mo., discovered how difficult it was to wean her son off breast milk. "After six months, I decided I'd wait until he turned 1," she says. "But after my baby turned a year old, he was still a baby — not talking, barely walking — and I wondered why I'd stop now."

- Agency

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