I don't know what made me think about this. I'm lying here attempting to nap, and for some reason Lily Allen's stage set-up at Glasto came into my head. I tweeted at her at the time, probably a little bit sanctimoniously, but I was a bit taken aback by the light-up giant baby-feeding bottles! The blokeface was also disgruntled, especially on discovering that rather than it being some weird tongue-in-cheek thing it was actually a homage to her husband's contribution to parenting their children. My problem at the time was that there are loads of ways for dads to parent babies, why focus on bottles? Now, though, a month later, my thoughts on this are a bit more complex.
First up, while it might seem nice of Lily to publicly thank him for his help, the way I see it he was simply being a partner. If we as a society want to argue for equality in parenting we have to drop this idea that men who are actively involved with their children's care are special. How many tributes do we see from male artists lauding their baby-mothers' assistance in raising their kids? Barely any, because that's the normal way of things. Lily I'm glad you appreciate Mr Cooper but he's not Superdad, he's just a dad.
Secondly I know that Ms Allen breastfed for a certain amount of time. I wonder if she realises how hard the various breastfeeding support organisations have worked in the past to make it even possible for most women to even try to breastfeed, how low rates were, how close we were to losing the skills and support needed. I wonder how much help she had to be able to breastfeed. Part of the work of the support organisations has been to encourage partners of breastfeeding mothers to find ways to parent without interfering with breastfeeding, all the countless other things that babies need other than feeding. For Lily to so publicly say 'hey my man's brilliant, he does night feeds' just kicks all that work, all those volunteer hours, in the face. That just seems ungrateful and rude, to me.
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