Here in America, we like a nice breast. But only if they’re on display in a tank top, preferably worn by a 22-year-old or, better yet, Kate Upton. Boobs being served up like Buffalo chicken wings at Hooters, or flashed during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, are awesome, woot-woot, high-five!
Working breasts, we do not like so much.
And when breasts are just doing their job — that is to say, lactating — we act like we’ve just seen a cockroach skittering across the floor, followed by a mouse. And a few bats. And a dead body.
If breast is best, as we’re so often told by our Aunt Phyllis and random strangers, then you’d think companies would do everything they could to support the efforts of working mothers who want to breast-feed for as long as possible, right?
Ha.
Since 2010, the Affordable Care Act has required that employers provide women with a private space with a locking door to pump; a bathroom does not count.
But a brilliant piece with an accompanying photo gallery by Isolde Raftery, an online editor at Seattle public radio station KUOW, indicates that many employers are falling short of this requirement, using former shower stalls, crowded supply closets, and even folding screens (in the middle of a larger room) for working mothers who wish to pump.
While Virginia Woolf wrote of the need for women to have money and a room of their own, many modern working mothers who choose to breast-feed their babies would settle for money (after the cost of child-care is deducted, obviously) and a clean room of their own in which to pump breast milk.
Many companies are to be commended for the spaces they provide: Some photos in the slideshow depict dimly lit, private rooms with comfortable glider chairs and hospital-grade pump stations.
Other companies provide spaces that are shameful.
A brief word of explanation for the uninitiated (WARNING: the following passage will discuss bodily functions): To breast-feed successfully, mothers need to pump every few hours or else their milk supply will decrease or dry up entirely (this can happen within a few days). To get a good supply of milk, you need to be relaxed — stress and breast-feeding do not go well together. And it’s hard to relax if you’re worried that one of your coworkers is about to walk in on you, topless and hooked up to a loud, droning machine.
In many ways, the issue of employee pumping rooms brilliantly reflects the ambiguity with which the entire country seems to view working motherhood — never mind the fact that it’s an economic necessity for most families, especially when more than 6 in 10 families with children have a woman as the primary or sole breadwinner. Many Americans would prefer that women stayed home to raise their children. But if those women “insist” on working, whether out of pure financial need or because they love their jobs, then they should feel very bad about it.
Retreat to your dark corner and produce that liquid gold, woman!
Working women need to start making more noise about the need for acceptable lactation rooms at work. No, it’s not sexy. Yes, it can be embarrassing: Who wants to talk about bodily functions with their boss?
But if we want to become the kind of country that truly supports working mothers, we need to stop apologetically skulking about in dark rooms and start demanding decent places to pump. It’s not an “entitlement issue,” unless you’d also consider going to the bathroom to be an entitlement.
And let’s face it. If men could breast-feed, there would be lactation man-caves lining each block, with flat-screen TVs, black leather couches, waiters and Buffalo wings.