Pumping
Jill Lepore’s article in the latest New Yorker is pretty good, and I’m sure parents everywhere will read it with interest. It has, however, a decidedly anti-pumping tone—the frequent allusions to cows and dairy farms seem to reflect a distaste for the breast pump that I can understand on the one hand, but seems unfortunately narrow-minded on the other.
Lepore is indisputably right that the increased prevalence and social visibility of breast pumping is a response to the increased number of women in the work place, and that it’s an inadequate response:
One big reason so many women stop breast-feeding is that more than half of mothers of infants under six months old go to work. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act guarantees only twelve weeks of (unpaid) maternity leave and, in marked contrast to established practice in other industrial nations, neither the government nor the typical employer offers much more. To follow a doctor’s orders, a woman who returns to work twelve weeks after childbirth has to find a way to feed her baby her own milk for another nine months. The nation suffers, in short, from a Human Milk Gap.
There are three ways to bridge that gap: longer maternity leaves, on-site infant child care, and pumps. Much effort has been spent implementing option No. 3, the cheap way out.
Absolutely. Family leave policies in the United States are an embarrassment. A society that was truly committed to a workforce in which men and women, parents and non-parents, can participate equally would have public policies in place that do not penalize working women who choose to have children and do not force women to choose between their children and their careers. The stingy benefits that US law provides (twelve unpaid weeks of leave) make it easier to balance work and family the higher up the socioeconomic ladder one is, which means families that need the most support get the least.
But! The question asked by the article’s subtitle—”If breast is best, why are women bottling their milk?”—does elide a whole set of possibilities. If, for instance, your baby is unable to breastfeed but you’d like to feed him breast milk instead of formula, a pump is the best option. And, even in a country with policies that allow new mothers to take reasonable family leave, women may choose to return to work before six months. Pumps shouldn’t be the only choice for women who want a career and a breast milk-fed baby, but they are an important tool for parents.
Filed under Parenting | Tags: breast milk, breast pumps, public policy | Comments (4)4 Responses to “Pumping”
Leave a Reply
Not to mention the freedom pumps provide for women: a stash of expressed breast milk (and a way to express it, of course) means a mother can actually be apart from her child for more than three hours — something she might want to do for any number of reasons, not just work.
(This comment was typed while I was pumping, incidentally.)
I read that article too, with great interest. I was struck that nowhere in there did she mention that the breast pump is a way for the father or partner to participate in the feeding of the baby while still being able to provide breast milk. I also thought that she didn’t quite answer the question of whether it is the cuddling and closeness from a mother that is best for the baby, or the breastmilk, if a parent can only choose between one or the other.
I am VERY impressed that you can type while pumping, Rachel. I have resigned myself to not being hands free while breastfeeding or pumping. Oh well.
I agree that you should have longer maternity leaves. I live in BC, Canada and we get 1 year of mat leave which gives us the chance to breastfeed for the first year and bond for that matter.
Second option should be on site daycare with the opportunity to leave work and breastfeed your child during the workday.
I finally read this article and I interpreted as a way for the author to chastise Americans for “settling” for the pump rather than longer maternity leaves or on-site daycare. However, by taking her anti-pump stance as far as she did, it seems that she is also chastising women for perhaps *wanting* to be apart from their babies for more than 3 hours, as Rachel points out, or wanting to turn over a little cuddle time to the father. I await the letters to the editor eagerly.