Source: KoratMember (Freedigitalphotos.net)
A local story about a young mother who was suing her school for inadequate access to a lactation room caught my eye a couple days ago, probably because this is the type of issue I’ve researching my thesis. (One of these days, I will write about it!)
For those of you without patience for a two minute video (hey, I hear you), here’s the gist of the story: A 29-year-old nursing student wanted a room to pump in after giving birth to her daughter. She was given a 15-minute break, but says when supervisors (?) found out what she was using it for, she found the room locked. Allegedly, she was told that it would be impossible to graduate if students were pregnant/parenting and after she had her child, she allegedly was told that she was becoming a “distraction” in the program.
She is now suing for discrimination.
As part of my studies I’ve focused on support available to students with children and giving them access to lactation rooms is a big part of that. My thoughts? That if lactation rooms are available (and really, they just need to be an enclosed room with a chair and an outlet), students should be able to use them. It’s not about making “exceptions” for certain people or giving certain students a special privilege.
It’s about ensuring the rights of breastfeeding mothers. I’m not sure how letting one student out to pump for 15 minutes is a distraction to the class, particularly since it was a nursing program. You’re going in the health field and a breastfeeding mom is a distraction to you? Methinks you should be studying something else.
When I was in undergrad, I was a new mom and it was a struggle to keep up with my daughter’s feeding schedule when I’d be away from her. You should have seen how quickly I ran out of class to hurry up and get my daughter so I could feed her before my boobs exploded. It was hellish. But I did it that way because I didn’t know enough about lactation rooms at the time. If someone had said, “Hey, just bring your pump and you can pump in this room,” I would have taken them up on it in a heartbeat. Would have made life so much easier.
Thank you for bringing up this important issue…I was a parent all throughout my undergrad & graduate years of school, and during that time I gave birth to 3 children, all of whom I nursed. There were some professors who were very accommodating during that time, in terms of allowing me a 25 min break rather than a 15 min one, or even a few who let me bring my newborn to class during the first few weeks after birth (they slept, I nursed discreetly, I completed all classes with flying colors. all were happy). there were a few who were outright disgusted by my efforts to be both nursing parent and student…
This issue is one that is a hot topic in my graduate program, primarily because we know if any of the women in the program needed a place to pump, we’d be out of luck. My program is at a regional campus of a very large public university, and there are some serious differences between main campus’ policies and ours. None of us have gotten pregnant (yet) during the program, despite the claim that our campus caters to working adults, but I’ll be the first to advocate for that person when she comes along. Thank you for bringing this issue to the attention of your readers; the university is supposed to assist students and be there for them, so this course of action described in the video seems counter-intuitive.