From a New York Times article about breastfeeding, class and jobs:
Doctors firmly believe that breast milk is something of a magic elixir for babies, sharply reducing the rate of infection, and quite possibly reducing the risk of allergies, obesity, and chronic disease later in life.
But as pressure to breast-feed increases, a two-class system is emerging for working mothers. For those with autonomy in their jobs — generally, well-paid professionals — breast-feeding, and the pumping it requires, is a matter of choice. It is usually an inconvenience, and it may be an embarrassing comedy of manners, involving leaky bottles tucked into briefcases and brown paper bags in the office refrigerator. But for lower-income mothers — including many who work in restaurants, factories, call centers and the military — pumping at work is close to impossible, causing many women to decline to breast-feed at all, and others to quit after a short time.
It is a particularly literal case of how well-being tends to beget further well-being, and disadvantage tends to create disadvantage — passed down in a mother’s milk, or lack thereof.
Is there enough demand to convert unused rooms for this? Would there be more demand if more women breastfed? Well, more babies breastfed.
ps Your new comment thingy is neat.
This topic has been wonderfully commented by Salon readers (down to technicalities that prevent pumping in… a bathroom stall). http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/09/01/breastfeeding/index.html
Often, it’s not purely a space issue, but class is definitely a huge factor. For example, in some office buildings, women who work in cubicles have to pump in a bathroom stall because management refuses to designate a more appropriate space. I don’t choose to eat my lunch in a bathroom stall, so why would I prepare my infant’s meal there? Women who have their own offices with doors that close have more flexibility.
I took a breastfeeding class a few years ago, and one of the women in my class was a cop. Logistically, it was impossible for her to breastfeed at work. She got one (short) lunch break a shift, and by the time she’d drive back to the station, remove her gear (apparently they don’t make nursing-friendly bullet-proof vests), then put it all back on again, her break would be over. No time for the pumping itself, let alone eating her own meal. She and many many women like her are forced to try to breastfeed only when they’re home with their children, which doesn’t always work. (Frequently, breastmilk supply diminishes when a woman isn’t nursing every few hours.)
I imagine that things are much much harder for women who work in non-office jobs where there simply is no dedicated private space other than a shared bathroom or manager’s office, for example many restaurants or retail spaces.
Clearly, there are jobs for which it might be very difficult to implement policies for breastfeeding, such as police work, but there are many, many jobs for which it is possible. I can only ascribe hostility to breastfeeding as either an artifact of hostility to women in the workforce, or guilt over not having breast fed one’s self (or one’s spouse not having done it). It takes virtually no space — not much bigger than a closet, with an electrical outlet and a lock on the door.
Just an afterthought — one strategy that breastfeeding advocates could employ is by noting that there are many employees who take breaks to smoke, usually with tacit acceptance by employers that they are not at their desk during that time, even though they might not officially be on break. Women don’t breastfeed forever, and unlike the smokers, they might actually be lowering the employer’s overall health care costs.
More blogging on this topic can be found here…
She and many many women like her are forced to try to breastfeed only when they’re home with their children, which doesn’t always work.
One thing that might help it work better is a decent length of time off work in which breastfeeding can be well established. Once mother and baby are well into the swing of it, it’s easier to, for instance, introduce formula during the day and continue breastfeeding in the evenings. I’m from the UK, where companies contrive to give working mothers six months of maternity leave, but I’m not sure if there are any genuine obstacles to a similar provision in the US.
Barbara: Clearly, there are jobs for which it might be very difficult to implement policies for breastfeeding, such as police work
Actually, I don’t think it would be too hard. I don’t think that asking for slightly longer or differently structured breaks so that a breastfeeding woman can pump for a while (usually no longer than a year, in my experience) is an unreasonable request.
Nick: I’m from the UK, where companies contrive to give working mothers six months of maternity leave, but I’m not sure if there are any genuine obstacles to a similar provision in the US.
I work for a “family-friendly” company that supposedly has offers some of the best benefits in town. It’s a company and an industry where the majority of the employees are women. Still my company offers the bare minimum required by US law, women have to go through quite a bit of logistical headache to get it, and there are so many loopholes that it’s not offered to many women at all.
What this fantastic benefit (also known as the Family Medical Leave Act) boils down to, in practice, is 12 weeks of unpaid leave. IF you’ve had your job for at least a year. And IF your company employs more than 50 people (or something like that) in your area. And IF you’re not somehow otherwise indispensible at work. Then they have to hold your job (or one like it) for you for 12 whole weeks. Wahoo.
It gets even better. The first 6 weeks of this unpaid leave, at my company, are covered by our Short Term Disability insurance, so that’s paid time off. Hooray! But one must use all accumulated sick days as part of the short term disability. So by the end of the first days or weeks of maternity leave, one is left with no more sick days to use for the rest of the year, or until more are accrued. (And 6 weeks of STD for a vaginal birth is a shorter period than a man would get off work for, say, abdominal surgery. C-section delivery grants the lucky new mom 8 whole weeks to recover, just like a male coworker with a “similar” surgery.)
After the STD period expires, the employee has to use all personal and vacation days as part of the FMLA leave. So after another few days or weeks of leave, the employee has no vacation or personal days to use until more are accrued. Only AFTER all leave (sick days, personal days, vacation days) is exhausted is the employee “allowed” to use the remaining days of the initial 12 week period allowed by law as unpaid leave.
And while on FMLA leave, ALL weekdays count, including company holidays like Christmas, when the office is officially closed and everyone else is allowed to be home with their families without using vacation days or counting it against a preciously short period of “maternity leave.”
We all know what happens when one goes back to work and leaves an infant in daycare. Colds! Sickness! Exhaustion and related illness! Regular pediatrician’s visits, etc! But there’s no time off work allowed to cope with this issues.
And still we have to hear a bunch of ignorant coworkers talking about how unfair it is that women get these “paid vacations” whenever they “pop out another kid.” And *lots* of people were against passage of the FMLA in the first place.
Bah humbug. (My company is headquartered in Europe, though there are thousands of us who work in several large offices in the States, so I’ve had ample opportunity to compare the maternity leave benefits, which do indeed vary widely, even within the same company, depending on which side of the Atlantic you call home.)