Some people are prudish. I don't think breastfeeding should be a taboo topic even though we make it so in the U.S. In parts of Africa, they breastfeed until children start losing their baby or "milk" teeth. We did a study on a long-unchanged culture with this mentality in an anthropology course in my university. It was also a matriarchal society, which is something you don't see very often. It is and used to be a very standard way of life.

I was an active member of La Leche League and still am a huge believer of the rights of mothers to breastfeed in public. You hardly ever see it in Texas. Most of the time, I actually got positive comments from other mothers. You see more on the covers of magazines than you do when a mother nurses in public. However, if you were with women, particularly those with children who couldn't or didn't breastfeed, I think they might have felt guilty and judged by you because they didn't breastfeed.

People did judge me though, especially relatives, first my aunts, which really galled me because not one of them even had a child of their own, my grandmother, my mother. I breastfed until my daughter self-weaned, and she didn't fully wean until she was 4 (mostly comfort nursing by then). I think it is neat that she tells me she still has some memories of nursing. I also believe it is a good part of the reason she almost never gets sick, even though I'm sure other factors play into it.

I really don't get why people in the U.S. are so prudish about a process that is so natural.