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I shouldn’t be shocked, I suppose. I’ve seen this kind of thing countless times. I’ve been directly exposed to this kind of thing countless times. And yet, every time I see some example of blatant discrimination against public breastfeeding, it shocks me anew. It totally shocks me. And it sickens me.
This most recent example – an ad for Chicago Now, stating that 'breastfeeding in public' is tacky!', and asking ‘mommies’ whether it’s really so ‘hard to find a bathroom’ – is particularly galling, however, because it is an advertisement. It isn’t casual, incidental discrimination; it isn’t the sudden dirty look from a passing stranger, or meaningful coughs from your mother-in-law. This is an advertisement. A business actually paid an advertising company to come up with this. They thought, for some reason, that it would resonate with a media-consuming public. And, yes, maybe it does. But that’s what is so messed up. This question should be settled, as settled as not refusing to serve same-sex couples in restaurants, or ensuring that public places are accessible to disabled persons. You have every right to be discomfited by public breastfeeding. You just don’t – or shouldn’t (depending upon what state or province we’re talking about) – have the right to protest or disparage it publicly.
The blogger who writes born.in.japan, who published the photos, notes that Chicago Now did put up a follow-up ad later, stating that breastfeeding in public is "no big deal." Perhaps they meant for the posters to provoke debate; perhaps they were responding to reader complaints. Doesn't matter. This shouldn’t be a subject for debate, any more than it should be a subject for debate whether the disabled should be allowed to ride buses or the elderly hold hands in public. The right of children to be nourished, and the right of mothers to nourish their children in the manner that best suits them, should trump anybody else’s right to not be made uncomfortable. It’s a matter of public health, and of the wellbeing of mothers and children: a mother who is publicly shamed for breastfeeding is potentially a mother who stops breastfeeding, and for every such mother are children who then do not receive the benefit of breastfeeding. Then, too, are the countless women who internalize such shaming even prior to becoming mothers and so choose to not breastfeed, whose children then do not benefit from breastfeeding. And so on.
As born.in.japan writes, 'this ad is just a single, poignant example of an unnecessary obstacle that mothers have to overcome when offering their babe the best nourishment available.' Unnecessary, and harmful. Let's not tolerate this. Let's not tolerate any of this. Please.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother and Their Bad Mother and The Bad Moms Club and anywhere, basically, where the going is bad and the bad gets going.
