Mom in controversial cover photo speaks out

UNDATED (NBC) -- Time magazine hits newsstands Friday morning with an eye-grabbing cover story with an increasingly popular theory of attachment parenting.

The cover shows a woman breastfeeding her three-year-old son.

The woman on the cover, Jamie Lynn Grumet, is no model -- she's a blogger and stay-at-home mom. With all the cover controversy, she appeared on The Today Show Friday morning to talk about why she thinks it’s so important for women to be breastfeeding longer.

"It’s a big commitment and it’s not right for everybody and I think that that’s the big thing,” Jamie Lynn Grumet said. “You need to do what’s best for your baby."

It is an intensive approach to motherhood built on the bonding foundations of breast feeding right up through toddlerhood: a family bed, wearing your baby and attending to the baby's every cry.

Doctor Bill Sears is the man behind attachment parenting.

"It’s not extreme,” he said. “If you were on an island, and you had no mother-in-laws, no psychologist, no doctors around, no experts, this is what you would naturally and instinctively do to give your baby the best investment you'll ever give."

Raised by a single mom, Sears' 1992 ‘The Baby Book’ put a heavy emphasis on a mother devoting extraordinary time and energy to her baby, but for some it raises a red flag.

"When you give a child the feeling that the whole world revolves around them, it’s not good training for the real world," psychotherapist Robi Ludwig said.

Jamie says her son is self-weaning right now and says she plans to breast feed her son for one more year.