“If you choose to have children, then there are consequences.”
I’ve heard this line in different variation from a host of readers over the years when ever I write about working moms, their rights, and changes that need to be made to the workplace in order for women to keep up with men. Most recently, I wrote a column for MSNBC.com about a new breast-feeding provision in the much derided health care reform law and I got a bunch of comments and emails, mainly from men, telling women to essentially go to hell. (Warning: If you decide to read the comments on my column some are pretty ugly.)
Basically, some readers surmised, if you want to have a baby and be a working mom you shouldn’t expect any accommodations at work and just grin and bear what ever comes. Nothing wrong with pumping breast milk while you sit in bathroom stall or just not breast feeding at all when you come back to work, even if it’s within a few weeks.
I sort of get some guys taking women to task about this because they don’t get breast feeding really, or motherhood. But when women attack women for wanting to change the workplace rules, that are still man-made rules and still keep women from taking on leadership roles in corporations and politics, it bugs me.
Take this email I got from a female reader who didn’t even provide her name after calling me an idiot, but her email handle is SkeerdyCat.
“I’m a woman and a lifelong liberal and this kind of issue is turning me into a Republican. Maybe this kind of thing works fine for bloggers and reporters and others with flexible schedules and flexible employers. But in the real world this kind of legislated privilege is yet another roadblock to advancement for the people who actually do the work.
Stop being an idiot and open your eyes.”
And she also included this sentiment which I typically hear from male readers:
“… if you choose to have children, then there are consequences. And yes, it’s a choice along with all the consequences that go with it.”
This lifelong liberal acts as if having children is like smoking a cigarette. I don’t know if she’s thought about it lately, but if her mother and dad had thought otherwise she may not be on this earth. And I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted her mom, if she chose to breast feed, to breast feed her liberal infant patootie in a bathroom stall, right?
This kind of workplace propaganda makes me madder than most slights against women, because it promulgates the notion that nothing in the American workplace should have to be changed. That all women, and men, should just shoe horn their changing lives and changing workplace demographics into a screwed up system that was based on a guy working 9 to 5 with a wife at home cooking the fatted calf.
Things should change and not just because we personally want these changes made. Frankly, I’m not a breast-feeding zealot. I wasn’t breastfed by my mother, and I breast fed my daughter for less than three months, and even less for my son. I personally would not choose to pump my breasts at work even if my employer had provided me with a lavish suite. That’s just me. But I see how important it is for so many moms out there, and they need to have to option to pump in a clean and private space.
This reader, and many other readers, keep claiming it will destroy the free market if women get an unpaid 20 minute break to provide breast milk to their kids. Well, they may not know what the hell they’re talking about.
After my column came out I got an email from the communications director for Senator Jeff Merkley. Turns out he was one of the key champions of the new breast feeding law, and championed a similar law in his state of Oregon in 2007.
As with the federal law, Merkley’s state legislation called for an exemption for businesses that found it would be an economic hardship for them to provide the time and space for women to breast feed. It turns out, it wasn’t that hard after all.
“Interestingly enough,” wrote Merkley’s director Courtney Warner Crowell, “every business that has applied for a hardship exemption was able to learn more about the specific components of the law and not a single business has actually moved forward with the hardship exemption.”
So why did Merkley, a man if you didn’t notice, support such legislation?
“Apart from the great health benefits that breast milk provides to infants, Senator Merkley also championed this cause because his family had been affected,” she said. “Senator Merkley’s wife is a nurse and after she had her first child and went back to work, she struggled to find a private place at the hospital she worked in to express milk. As a nurse, she knew the health benefits that breast milk provided.”
I wonder if SkeerdyCat would think Merkley was an idiot.
February 2nd, 2011 at 9:53 am
In reality, this Western/US aversion to seeing a woman breastfeed is twisted over-extension of some extreme modesty mores. If we, in general, felt comfortable with the sight of a breastfeeding woman, I don’t think we’d be seeing this problem, on either side of the issue. Mothers would likely feel less of a need to have a fully private space for nursing, and others would be more likely to accept the presence of a nursing mother in the room.
Of course, such cultural changes won’t happen overnight.
I do like Merkley’s legislation because it follows the same logic as the ADA and similar legislation at the state level: exemptions are available if the accomodation would prove to be a hardship, but in most cases a little education makes it clear that reasonable accomodations aren’t all that difficult to provide.
Can I envision any situations where such hardship cases might exist? Yes, but they are few. I can see a hardship claim if the business is one of those stand-alone coffee booths (like the old photo-marts) that only ever has a single employee on duty, or a small company that operates out of a single, shared office space. In the latter of those scenarios, however, it’s likely that there would be some space in the office complex that would provide the desired level of privacy (or, at least, greater privacy).
I’m also guessing (and its just a guess) that many of the men who oppose breastfeeding in the workplace probably don’t have a problem staring at breasts via pornography (because, statistically, many men view such images), or via softer forms like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or a sports/car/motorcycle calendar. Perhaps they don’t want to be reminded of their particular titillation.
February 2nd, 2011 at 10:11 am
@HikingStick - I think you’re on to something with the breasts as pornography point. Most of American advertising is designed around the idea that women are sexy, drink this beer, and you’ll get a set of jiggling breasts to play with. Seeing a woman breastfeed, or use breasts for what they were biologically designed for, takes the “fun” out of breasts for men. The same breast that bounces in a bikini in Baywatch doesn’t look half as attractive hooked up to a pump.
February 2nd, 2011 at 10:55 am
You both have an interesting perspective on the breasts as porno point. There may indeed be something to it.
As for certain jobs, like coffee booths, and breast feeding… California has had this law for about a decade now, and a breast feeding advocate there told me small booths in malls, and in communities, have been pooling their efforts with other small businesses to provide a communal space for the nursing women they employ.
There are probably ways to make it work if people sit down and think a bit.
February 2nd, 2011 at 12:57 pm
These are the same kind of debates that raged in the beginning of the 20th century around women and voting, or women and working outside the home, etc. etc.
Some women have such a precarious social and moral position that they defend their own perspective as if other women’s lives put theirs in danger. There’s a bit of an Uncle Tom thing going on. SkeerdyCat, for example, seems paranoid that asking for too much “accommodation” will be seen as uppity, and threaten her job prospects.
February 2nd, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Oh, and I should point out that I live and work in Oregon, and thanks to Merkeley and others like him, I was able to pump to feed my son until he was a year old, and feed my child in public whenever he was hungry without fear of harrassment.
It’s a weird thing in America, that we’re so comfortable with violence, and so unconfortable with nurturing.
February 2nd, 2011 at 2:49 pm
This is just another example of a masculine dominated society controlling how things are done. The ignorance displayed in some of these comments shows a staggering lack of understanding about what creates a growing and thriving culture, whether it be in business, education, government or families. Oh, that we should “suffer the concequences” of choosing to reproduce. Why should the realities of growth be considered “consequences” and not a natural part of our existence?
February 3rd, 2011 at 6:21 pm
I came across your article when it popped up in my google alert for “shared office space”. As a woman with friends who breastfeed and the manager of a shared office suites property, I can honestly say that if someone came to us with this issue, we would find a way to make it happen. I’m not sure we could provide a permanently dedicated space but a recurring conference room appointment with a locking door and a locked drawer for pumping supplies could be easily managed.
February 11th, 2011 at 7:25 am
After 10 years I decided to have another baby. Since I had to return back to work I had to tink about breastfeedig and pumping. My work was kind enough to put up blinds in my office but asked me what my plans were for storing the milk during the day . Throughout my building there were three mini fridges two large ones. I had hoped to get one if the small fridges fit my own use since two were in the same room and being occupied by men but was told that if the gave me one they would have to do it for everyone. I was the first pregnant women in my office in five years, that lady didn’t nurse. Not sure what they meant by everyone…. no One else is pregnant , thinking of becoming pregnant. It’s so uncomfortable for me to “share” the fridge……. That I keep a picnic cooler hidden under my desk.
Rochester/Buffalo New York