This week marks eleven years at my job, and how did I celebrate? By not going back to work after maternity leave. Yikes.
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I know this is super-old news, but as a nursing mother, and a working mother, I feel like I have to say something. Several weeks ago university professor Adrienne Pine made news for breastfeeding her infant daughter during the first day of class as American University, in Washington, D.C. A few students freaked out, as you’d expect (”Boobs! Ew!”), and the story made the front page of the Washington Post. Pine defended the incident via a blog post in which she insisted that breastfeeding her child while leading a lecture was neither an “incident” nor one that needed defense.

Naturally both Pine–who was teaching a feminist anthropology class–and the media made the issue about public breastfeeding and gender discrimination and natural, protected acts. Obviously this is why the story made headlines, but I’d argue that the problem–and yes, I do think breastfeeding a child in front of a class is a problem–shouldn’t be about how the baby was fed but that the baby was there at all. Pine said she had to bring her daughter to class because she was too sick to attend daycare. How was she, then, not too sick to bring into a college classroom?

As for the feeding issue, the thorn for me isn’t that a woman was breastfeeding in public or even in a classroom, it’s that she was breastfeeding while teaching a class, and there’s no way that wouldn’t be distracting any less so than if she were bottle feeding or spoon feeding her baby. A natural act–even a legal, protected act–does not necessarily mean it’s an appopriate-in-all-situations act. Does a professional actor bring her baby on stage during a performance? Does a judge feed her baby under her robe?

Although Pine insists it wasn’t a stunt and that she didn’t want to turn the “incident” into a “teachable moment” (just coincidence that it happened during a feminist anthropology course, then?), I wonder why she didn’t hire a babysitter for the short duration of the class. She actually did this the very next day. Since the baby is normally in daycare, I’d assume she can be bottle- or spoon-fed by someone besides her mother, and that’s where I take issue with the idea that breastfeeding while teaching class was the only–or even best–option.

I wrote about my own feelings on public breastfeeding here, and I too have experience breastfeeding my non-bottle-taking first son at the office. I did it behind a closed door on a break, though, not while leading a staff meeting or giving a public presentation.

I really don’t think the issue here is about nipples or gender discrimination or even breastfeeding but about professional conduct, which I’d say was breached by having a baby in the classroom at all, regardless of how she was fed. If a male professor brought a child to class and bottle fed him during a lecture, I’d feel the same.

What do you think? Was it appropriate for Pine to breasfeed her sick daughter during class?