No, it's not an attack on breastfeeding.

[velvetpage]

No, she doesn't want you to stop breastfeeding. She wants women in America to stop being guilt-tripped into pumping at work.

The key quote, for me - and it's restated further up the article in a different way - is this: Why, as a society, have we privileged the magic elixir of maternal milk over actual maternal contact, denying the vast, vast majority of mothers the kind of extended maternity leave that would make them physically present for their babies?

That's it. Right there. Her hyperbole about relegating the pump to the history books is just that - hyperbole. There are plenty of babies who need that pumped milk to live, and I would certainly not deny any mother the right to do that for her preemie or sick child. Nor do I dislike extended nursing or any of the other variations on nursing that are out there. The problem I see with America's push to get women breastfeeding is that all the push is on the moms. There's very little societal investment in it. There's no paid maternity leave. There's no cultural assumption that the best place for the mother of a child under a year is at home with that child, where they can then nurse their baby as much (or as little) as they want to. There's guilt, and there's resources to help a woman figure out how to "make it work," but there aren't enough resources to actually take some of the pressure off her so she CAN make it work.

I have never seen a breast pump at work in Canada. I work in places where there are constantly women having babies, because teaching is a female-centered profession. I don't know anyone who has pumped at work or even suggested doing so, and the reason the movement hasn't caught on here as it has in the States is that women are on maternity leave when they're breastfeeding exclusively. By the time they go back to work, it's no longer quite that crucial that their babies get nothing but breastmilk. They're getting solids, maybe juice or water, and their nursing has naturally tapered off. And that's the way it should be.

Breast pumps are a wonderful stop-gap measure. They keep preemies alive. They're great for increasing milk supply before the growth spurt so that you've got a supply in the freezer and don't have to deal with OMGsoHUNGRYbaby when the growth spurt starts.

But if the breast pump is ubiquitous in the workplace, it's because the whole culture surrounding motherhood in that place has got it terribly, terribly wrong.

Comments

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

This intriuges me, an American. How does that work? Are there laws that say an employer has to give a woman her job back after she's been gone for a year? Does she have a year-long leave in some cases, where she never has to quit her job to get a year off?
My sister is a pregnant schoolteacher in Maryland, due in September (of all times). I don't envy her work sitch. I'm still happily coasting by on hubby's income while I stay home with my three year old.

[stress-kitten.livejournal.com]

It is part of our employment insurance program here. As long as you are paying into Employment Insurance, you are entitled to 50 weeks of child-leave paid for by the government. The first 17 weeks must be taken by the mother. The balance of the weeks can be taken by either the father or the mother.

You aren't paid your full salary - it's a percentage of your salary up to a cap which I can't remember off the top of my head - but it makes staying home for that first year a viable option for most people.

Your employer is required by law to not permanently fill your position while you are on those 50 weeks of maternity leave. They must hire someone temporarily to fill it, or leave it open. If the position disappears during your maternity leave due to the company shrinking and needing to lay off workers, the employer needs to be damn sure they can show that your position would have been eliminated regardless of whether you were on mat leave or not.

Many larger employers actually provide a "top up" program where they will "top up" your maternity leave salary given by EI to your full salary, so you aren't even losing money staying at home. Such programs are usually for the first 17 weeks.

[hannahmorgan.livejournal.com]

I think the cap is 54%.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

She doesn't have to quit her job. She is granted a year's maternity leave and her employer is required to hold a job for her at similar pay level to the one she left. This has the side benefit of allowing new workers with less experience to get their foot in the door by covering for a maternity leave. The mom can access EI the same as a worker can who has been laid off.

There are downsides - self-employed workers aren't qualified for EI, for example, and if your company lays you off while you're on mat leave, there are no additional benefits coming your way. But it's a darn sight better than nothing.

[xx-kitty-kat-xx.livejournal.com]

Many countries offer 12 months of maternity leave, with other conditions for the following 12 months to help the mother ease back into work.

In Australia, you get 12 months off, and your job has to be held for you. When you come back to work after that 12 months, you have the option of working part time for the next 12 months - so you can have up to two years before returning to full time work.

In New Zealand, where I now live, you have 12 months maternity leave, of which 14 weeks is paid, the amount paid set by the government. It's less than I currently earn, but I'm pretty well paid. Upon return to work, there are flexible work options which are restricted only by what the employer and employee can agree on.

Both countries have subsidised childcare, and both countries allow for the father to take the leave rather than the mother, if that's what works best. Adoptive and foster parents are also able to access parental leave when the child arrives into their care. Generally, what you do is discuss with your employer when you're due, how much leave you want, when you plan to return to work. You can take anything between about 6 weeks and the full 12 months. You can decide at any time that you will not be returning to work, and then you just resign as normal. You can also decide to return to work early.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

A lot of that is echoed in Canada, though we don't have the extended part-time option. I have a cousin whose wife returned to work after the first seventeen weeks (which can only be taken by a birth mother.) Then he took the remaining 35 weeks of parental leave to stay home with their daughter.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, but I want to point out one more use for the breast pump: feeding twins or other multiples. My cousin used one for her twins so that she and her husband could each feed one baby instead of making one baby wait while the other was being fed.

[integritysinger.livejournal.com]

I think I've told you before (maybe I told someone else) that women tried to convince me to take hormones to induce lactation so my adopted infants could have the benefits of breast milk. This, after I'd had a pituitary tumor because my polycystic ovaries had caused hyperprolactinemia - I was lacting and never pregnant.

so no thank you, I did not want to then tell my body, "oh hey, thanks for making prolactin when i didn't want it but now I DO want it so I'm going to dose myself with a synthetic hormone stimulator to convince the pituitary to make the prolactin it got a tumor for earlier" yeah. ignoramuses.

Instead of going apesh!t on these women I simply said (they were church folks) "If god knew these children would not be with their birthmother getting breast milk, then he knew their little immune systems would be just fine on formula. I'm not worried about it."

LOL!

[archai.livejournal.com]

We have a huge stigma for some reason against taking things. We must earn all that we have directly, or we are doing it wrong. Relying on society to make it happen for us. We're a drag - and if you don't feel that way about yourself, there are plenty of people around you at any given time that will do it for you.

Not that most people would have that much trouble leaning on an entirely employer-funded maternity leave plan, but a plurality of employers are not big enough to make that happen unaided and I suppose it would take - gasp - some sort of social program to make it actually come about.

And you know our hangups about socialism. There is a stigma to the word itself for some reason. Possibly something to do with half a century of cold war with those damn dirty commies, and twenty years of refusal by one major party (of two) to let go of the idea that pure, unadulterated capitalism is the only possible way to do things, anything, and all else is BLASPHEMY. They won't even look to any of our allies for examples of a solution to a given problem because the VAST majority of them - ohnoes - are socialist to some extent.

Anything someone tries to slip in that resembles a social program - especially a new social program - gets instantly decried in Washington as "creeping socialism." Beaten to death with possibilities of abuse, waste, and government fraud that haven't even had a chance to happen yet. Blown entirely out of proportion until we must creep back into the shadows, and hide behind the desecrated corpse of the thing that would have been.

I say we need to have done with this timid, creeping socialism. I would like some unabashed, roaring socialism, please. Maybe then, we could catch up to you guys.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

There's a lot to be said for the UK. Our National Insurance and NHS etc creak but by and large, they work.

And having paid in at top whack on my NI (single male!) I have no qualms about claiming what I've been paying for all these years.

[stress-kitten.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that in most states it is required that you insure your vehicle, and yet they don't want to insure your job. People have no problem accepting the payout of insurance on their property, yet would balk at accepting payout at the loss of their job, even when it's simply tiding them over until they find their next one.

I'm sure that says something profound about something. I'm not going to stretch it too hard though. :-)

[loxian.livejournal.com]

I too work in a female dominated profession (nursing), and I have never seen a breast pump at work either, presumably for the same reason - women here can take up to a year of maternity leave.

I took a year off work after each of my children was born, and nobody thought I was a hippy or a scrounger. It's just normal.

It seems to me that the less time women actually have to spend with their children the more fanatical they get about breast feeding. It's as if it somehow makes up for being away from them. Then that fanaticism turn causes women to turn against each other instead of against the system that forces them to be away from their babies in the first place.

[mockingbirdq.livejournal.com]

I'm going to ask some stupid questions because I am American, and although I vaguely understand that other countries have better materinity leave than ours, I have no idea what it it.

Even in Canada, how do women breastfeed exclusively for a year without pumping? What is the maternite leave like there?

What this writer didn't "get" though, is that if one has to work and if a women wants to breastfeed, the breastpump is the only way to manage this. I'm not saying formula is evil or anything, but I think breastmilk preferrable and there are many mothers who can't give it to their children without the machine. A longer maternity leave would be better, but since in the US maternity leave is unpaid, most people can't manage to stay home for long.

I was home with my son for 6 months as a baby only because I was "lucky" enough to be let go from my job during a takeover while 6 months pregnant and in college. Most of my friends have had 6-8 weeks if they are lucky, and many women in the United States are too poor to take even that unpaid time off.

How are the jobs protected while women are on leave in Canada? In the USA, the company is required to offer a "similarly paying position" but it doesn't have to be the SAME position, in terms of hours or prestige, so the longer you are out the more likely you are to have someone replace you, and to be offered a position you won't want.

I used a brestpump while nursing at home, but I knew I would soon need a supply of breastmilk in the freezer and I also liked my husband being able to give the occassional bottle when I wasn't around. never found using a machine to produce milk "degrading" or any of that crap, but maybe I'm strange.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

In Canada, the maternity leave is provided through Employment Insurance, so they didn't have to create a new program for it - they just modified an existing program, one which has a counterpart in the States. It provides 55% of your income up to a certain threshold, and many companies "top it up" by paying the difference between that amount and your full salary. (My school board was doing that by the time of my second leave, so i used my sick leave before the baby was born and the maternity leave after, with the result that I had my full salary until the end of the school year and actually more money coming in through the summer than usual. We didn't start to feel the pinch until Claire was about five months old.) Companies are required to hold your job for you for a year, usually filling it with a contract worker in the meantime, and if your job disappears, they have to offer you a similar one. If you're laid off during your mat leave, they have to be able to prove that you would have been laid off anyway - i.e. the entire department is closing. It's not perfect, but it's pretty decent, and it lasts for 52 weeks.

I think the author was using the image of a breast pump and the feeling of being a cow - which I never had either, but I knew women who did feel that way - as a hook for the more important question. American parent culture says that being home is important, but if you can't (and it does nothing to help with that choice) the next best thing is to pump for your baby. The article is pointing out how backwards this is. Rather than fighting with each other about how pumping is fine and manageable in the workplace and we should be fighting for the right to pump while working, we should be getting together and telling our elected representatives that expecting new moms to go back to work at six or eight or even twelve weeks is just plain WRONG. Pumping is not in the best interests of babies. Having their moms at home is in the best interest of babies, and society needs to facilitate that.

She'd like to see the pump out of the workplace because it's not needed there anymore, because babies are getting their breastmilk from the source most of the time. The rest of that stuff about how degrading it is - all of that is literary technique, designed to hook the women who felt like that and get the article circulated in outrage amongst the women who didn't, in the hopes that the REAL message - American women need to fight for better societal supports for new moms so they can breastfeed (as distinct from bottlefeeding human milk) - will also be discussed.

I certainly never felt degraded by breastfeeding. But the idea of trying to squeeze pumping into a too-full day of teaching has me shivering in terror even now. If that had been what it took to get my child breastmilk, I would have formula-fed after going back to work. I have no trouble seeing how a professional woman would feel degraded by using a pump in the workplace. The fact that they would be expected to do so, rather than granted a few months off so that they could perform that motherly function at home (with or without a pump) is an element of repression.

Really, the newborn period is so very brief. Surely some financial support through an existing program extended in this way would make sense to support families.

[mrs-dm.livejournal.com]

I'm one of the self-employed mothers who went back to work at 6 months and pumped breastmilk subsequently for a few months. I think at about 10 months, my baby was fine with just a morning and evening nursing, so I dispensed with the daytime pumping.

I'm glad I had the choice to go back to work. Frankly, staying at home for a year with a baby would have made me go batty. It did help that the Ontario Medical Association (sort of like a Doctor's Union) had recently started a "maternity leave" stipend to give women doctors a bit of money (for up to 17 weeks) while on maternity leave, but for a full-time family doctor, it would only work out to a fraction (less than 25%) of her usual take-home pay. Luckily, I wasn't a full-time family doctor.

Prior to that, there were horror stories, like about the woman GP who went back to work 6 days after her baby was born, because there was no one to take over her family practice.

So, there are large sections of the woman's workforce who are self-employed and not eligible for a year's maternity leave, but it's getting better, at least in medicine.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's certainly not a perfect system - anyone who works in an industry that doesn't pay into EI is not eligible, and the number of hours you have to be working before you're eligible is so high that most part-time women (read: most second-time moms) can't access EI at all. We need to fight for improvements to it, still. But it is getting better.

[heather-button.livejournal.com]

A very interesting article. While I agree that the emphasis should be on getting better leaves for moms so that they don't have to go back to work so early (I actually had to return to work when Nathan was 4 WEEKS old), I think that there also needs to be some sort of accomodation (for pumping) for those who, until we get improved mat leave, want to feed their babies breastmilk. Not only did my employer demand that I return so soon after delivery (or I was fired), but I was denied any time or place to pump (I wasn't asking for a special room or anything, just to be able to hang a "do not disturb" sign on an empty office for 10-15 minutes). Because of my particular issues, I really needed to be nursing/pumping MUCH more often. Unfortunately, I had to give up nursing at 6 weeks. It still makes me a bit sad to think about it. I envy women who are able to stay home longer and nurse longer. Maybe things will work out next time.

Thanks for the interesting article!

[kesmun.livejournal.com]

Your boss was an unmitigated ass.

[heather-button.livejournal.com]

I wholeheartedly agree! Which is why I'm no longer at that job, and hope I have a better time of it next time 'round.