This week I've been roughing out another post on breastfeeding in my head because nursing in public has been in the news. There's a push to get Starbucks to welcome breastfeeding; there's a new law protecting public breastfeeding in Illinois. And as always, in response there are snarky columnists bemoaning the existence of nursing babies who don't know that they are only supposed to do that in private. Because maybe breastmilk is good for babies but don't these women know that it comes from their -- sshhh! -- breasts, which God intended to be covered at all times unless they are wearing skimpy tank tops? And don't people know that the next thing these breastfeeding nuts will demand is the right to defecate and copulate in public? I mean, really, can't everyone see that peaceful nursing babies mean it's hell-in-a-handbasket time for the nation?
Oh, dear. Lie down with snarks, get up with boojums.
But that is the point at which my patience evaporates: when a mother and a nursling are accosted by a person unwilling to shift his gaze six inches from something that makes him uncomfortable. That's the point where I say, Enough. You are free to make your own decisions about how to feed your own babies. But so am I; so is every other mother you see. Don't make nursing more difficult than it already is in this culture. In my mental rough draft I had one thing to say to vocal opponents of public nursing and it was this:
Get over it.
And then today I took my children to the art museum.
About halfway into the trip the train stopped for a bit while they looked into a minor mechanical problem. Joe said, "Nuss dain" [nurse on the train] and I obliged. A few minutes later the woman sitting across from me, the woman who had warmly answered Marty's question about a locked compartment on the train not fifteen minutes before, said, "I just want you to know that what you're doing is offensive to everyone sitting in front of you." She was sitting next to a couple who might have been in their late fifties or early sixties. They did not look at me or speak to me for the rest of the time they rode the train.
I was deeply uncomfortable wth public nursing as a first-time mother. I remember being out with Alex when he was tiny tiny, thinking, "I am about to bare my breast in public so my son can suck on my nipple. This is weird." I remember feeling so awkward at church, so distracted at the thought of having accidentally flashed my neighbor in the pew that I couldn't concentrate on the mass. I practiced in front of my bedroom mirror to learn how to be discreet. Seven years and several thousand nursings later, I'm in a much different spot. If Joe needs to nurse, I rarely think twice about it.
Before today I had imagined conflicts over public nursings, but no one had ever confronted me. In more than seven years there had been a couple of dirty looks and unpleasant asides (as if I were deaf because I was lactating), and that's it. In my imaginings I had considered the evasive route ("He'll be done in a minute") and the confrontational route ("The law in this state protects public breastfeeding. If you have a problem with the law, call your legislator.") What came out of my mouth surprised me.
I said, "Can you tell me why it offends you?"
She answered immediately, with visible distaste: "That you would do that in front of a man."
"But I'm covered up. There's nothing showing. Just the idea bothers you?"
She said she didn't understand why I started nursing him. He wasn't crying, she said. Why would I see a need to nurse him?
I told her that he had asked me quietly, and that I had said yes in part because nursing is one way to keep a bored child occupied for ten minutes -- so he does not become an unhappy disruptive child while they are fixing the train's door. We talked for a few minutes more and I said, "You know, it surprises me that you would be so direct about this. I've been on public transit when people are swearing a blue streak and nobody says, Hey, there are kids here -- watch your language. Sometimes people smoke on the train and nobody says anything about it. You must feel very strongly about this to say something to me."
At this point, with the repair attempt having been abandoned, the car began to fill up with passengers. Because of the people in between us I could not hear what she said in reply. I asked her to repeat it and still I could not understand. I wish I knew: what is it about nursing that some people find more offensive than nose-picking or extravagant streams of obscenity or any of the other public behaviors that we may find grating but do not address? (Maybe I look more approachable than your average font of obscenity. That started out as a joke, but maybe there's some truth to it: maybe it happens because most breastfeeding mothers are young-ish women.)
A half-dozen stops later the crowd thinned out and I picked up the conversation again. "Do you mind if I ask you another question? Does it bother you more because of my son's age?" She said yeah, she would mind less if he were an infant. Bottom line, she said, is that it's okay if you want to nurse your kids, but it ought to be private. Every time.
I felt like we hadn't made much progress toward common ground. I didn't apologize for offending her, and I didn't stop nursing my son. She was still definite that nursing should happen in private. But she smiled at Joe, who had fallen asleep despite the noise, and asked me kindly if I needed help getting the double stroller and the sleeping toddler off the train safely. And then she said the most surprising thing of all. She said, "I kind of commend you for doing that, as a woman."
We were almost at our stop and so I spoke quickly. I said, "Once I heard an anthropologist say that in most parts of the world breasts are viewed like elbows. They have a job to do and nobody pays attention if they're exposed while they're doing it. I don't feel like I'm doing anything commendable nursing my son when he needs it -- I'm just being the mom, just doing my job." I said, "Thanks for talking with me." We got off the train.
An hour later I was still shaking amid the Zurbaráns, still running back over the conversation in my mind. I thought to myself, "Why am I still shaking? I was respectful to the woman and true to myself. What's going on here?" Tonight, back at home, I am thinking of our society's resistance to breastfeeding as an old stone wall. This afternoon I took a sledgehammer and swung it at the wall. I wasn't expecting it to jar my arms that way. But maybe there is a crack in the wall that wasn't there this morning.
***
I remain unhappy about writers who use their columns to spread ill will about breastfeeding. I won't bother to link to the two I read this week; there's no shortage of examples if you're curious. It seems almost as strange to me to see a mainstream US newspaper condemning public breastfeeding as shameful as it would to see a mainstream US newspaper contending that any decent woman should wear a burqa. (And how weird is it that many burqa-wearing women live in cultures where they get less flak about public breastfeeding than American women do?) If I could talk to these writers I would say three things (excluding "do you really believe the tripe you sneaked past your editor this week or are you both getting a kickback from Mead Johnson?" -- which I am too polite to ask):
1) Breastfeeding matters. Even in the developed world, babies who don't get their mothers' milk are more likely to get sick and die than babies who do. For many illnesses the difference is dose-related, so that babies who are fully bottle-fed are less healthy than babies who are partially bottle-fed, who are less healthy than exclusively breastfed babies. For a baby at risk, just one bottle can make a difference. In addition to the article on mortality rates linked above, there are links on morbidity in these posts.
2) The sexual function of breasts, which seems to be the reason why so many people get their knickers in a twist about breastfeeding, is an overlay function. Just as your larynx is primarily there to protect your airway, with a pleasant bonus being that it allows you to sing Bach's Coffee Cantata, breasts exist, from a biological perspective, chiefly for lactation. The fact that many couples find other things to appreciate about breasts should not eclipse their primary function, any more than women should wear earmuffs at all times in public because some couples find the earlobe to be an erogenous zone.
3) Human babies are designed to feed frequently. Denying them the right to nurse in public means either that you deprive them of the food they were meant to have (and please don't suggest expressing milk for outings unless you have happy memories of cozying up to a pump yourself) or that you sentence their mothers to housebound isolation.
To oppose public breastfeeding is to oppose improved public health. I'm willing to listen to objections with an open mind, but I think you need awfully compelling reasons to demand that another woman modify her behavior -- particularly if you're suggesting an alternative which is worse for her baby's health.
Before my conversation on the train today I was trying to think what might flash through the mind of an OOPS (Opponent Of Public Suckling) when he watched a baby at the breast. Maybe, "That woman is helping her child reach his full cognitive potential! In public! How could she?" Or, "I can't believe it -- there's more optimal neurological maturation happening over there. The shame!" Perhaps, "There's another kid who's going to have a normal-sized thymus gland.* Shock! Horror!"
I don't think sarcasm would have taken me very far with the woman on the train today, though. And maybe that's where I'd like to leave things tonight: if you're squeamish about public breastfeeding, I'd be glad to listen to the reasons why. I may not agree, but I'm willing to listen. If you happen to be a writer reading this, I hope I can encourage you to write carefully about breastfeeding, to remember that infant feeding choices can have a lifelong health impact.
Wouldn't it be amazing if there was never another comparison between breastfeeding and public urination? Wouldn't it be fabulous if there were no more sweeping misinformed statements à la John Morgan, the defenestrated former etiquette columnist for The Times of London, who opined, "It is bad manners to expel any liquid from any orifice in public and breast-feeding (sic) is no different"? Wouldn't it be great if every columnist who ever snarked about public breastfeeding decided to devote his or her energies to ending illicit smoking on public transportation instead?
I can always dream.
___________
*A 1999 study cited in Jan Riordan's Breastfeeding and Human Lactation found that formula-fed children had thymus glands half the size of those of their exclusively breastfed counterparts, which may have repercussions for immune function.
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