By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Gisele Bundchen angered New Yorkers Thursday when she said that breastfeeding should be mandatory for women with babies six months or younger.
The Brazilian supermodel and wife of football star Tom Brady, who owns an apartment in Greenwich Village, released her opinions during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK.
Pictured with 7-month-old Benjamin, the article quotes Bundchen saying that “they [in the U.S.] think they don’t have to breastfeed, and I think, ‘Are you going to give chemical food to your child when they are so little?’”
“I think there should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months.”
Experts and mothers alike railed against Bundchen after her statement, posting blogs and comments on websites devoted to child-rearing.
“I totally agree, as long as there are some attendant statutes requiring all women to be supermodels married to super bowl-winning quarterbacks,” said Ceridwen Morris, author and member of the Childbirth Education Association of Metropolitan New York, on parenting site babble.com.
Morris continued that while breastfeeding was the best option, making it the law doesn't take into account the facts that many women don't have access to the necessary pumps and aren't able to take off time during the workday to do it.
On Parenting.com, a New York-based website, one New York mother who goes by the blogname LEENGA, says, “She needs to stick to the catwalk and being a celebrity, not try to be a baby expert!”
Bundchen says she didn’t mean to offend anyone with her statement.
“My intention in making a comment about the importance of breastfeeding has nothing to do with the law,” she wrote on her blog Monday. “It comes from my passions and beliefs about children.”
“I understand that everyone has their own experience and opinions and I am not here to judge,” she wrote.
