Dried milk

On the trials and rewards of weaning children

Featured in

  • Published 20221101
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-74-0
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

THE RUIN OF the new mother is the raspberry.

I give Yasmin, her eight-month-old, the bursting prize of the red berry. I know what I am doing. Yasmin’s smooth, brand-name knit has never been stained, until today. I jerk the chain on my own passive-aggressive sabotage, but it’s the only way to defend my own decomposing home: a living room covered in smeared yoghurt, crumbs and spilled milk. Mothers are competitive. They compete over sleep, over breastfeeding, over bottle-feeding, over milestones, over sanitised cleanliness, over baby-led weaning and puréed liver as a first food. It is not a matter or skill or devotion; it is simply luck or privilege or choice of partner, but mothers compare and internalise nevertheless. Your love for your child is dependent on your ability to feed them perfectly. Raspberries are the great equaliser.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

The whole truth

Non-fictionActing methods...have remarkable similarities to spiritual cults. They have leaders, dogmas, even seminal texts. They have supervised rites and orthodox practices. They have stages of enlightenment, and trained leaders who will inform you whether you’ve reached such heights (and you usually haven’t, unless you’re sleeping with the leader in question).

More from this edition

Heat and hope and attention

MemoirRules that were once rooted in religion have settled into our insides as secular, self-imposed rules about ‘good’ food and ‘bad’ food and, by extension, ‘good’ bodies and ‘bad’ bodies.

Tastemakers

IntroductionI’m still pleasantly mystified by our obsession with food – our need to talk about it, remember it, photograph it and analyse it, to eat our feelings and compare our lives to buffets and boxes of chocolates. 

Fallen apples

EssayFrom the twelfth century in Western Europe, the apple, scientific name malus, became the forerunner for the unidentified forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden, probably because its symbolism was already well established in Norse and Greek mythology, and the wordplay was irresistible: malus derives from the Latin word malum, which meant both evil or wrongdoing and fruit plucked from a tree.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.