Fodder for Debate: Newsstand
Etiquette lesson for breastfeeding moms: Cover up
Etiquette lesson for breastfeeding moms: Cover up
This is not a rights issue, it's about an individual's ability to size up a situation and employ basic common sense and respect for others
By Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun January 14, 2011
If it's a brand new year, it must surely be time for the latest instalment of The Young and The Breastfeeding, that perennial public soap opera whereby an earnest breastfeeding mother battles a villainous merchant because the retailer has the gall, the nerve, to ask her not to nurse her baby openly in his store.
Cue the outrage, and hand-wringing, the protesting and indignant maternal angst as we watch another angry young mom act out against the slight, the insult, the perceived discrimination -- so much so that she takes her tale to the media and even stars in a video about her treatment at the hands of the devil, spending more time grousing about her hurt feelings than, say, breastfeeding her baby.
The plot of our latest episode is this: Samantha Watt was shopping at Farmhouse Collections furniture store in Vancouver last weekend, with her 10-month-old son Damian and her two toddlers in tow, when the baby wanted lunch. She says it was too cold to feed him in the car, so she plopped down in an armchair and began breastfeeding, apparently eschewing the niceties of a coverup. And then along came store owner Kelly King, who asked her to stop, saying two customers had complained.
Watt declined, citing previous cases and the B.C. Human Rights Code, which dictates it is illegal to discriminate or harass a woman breastfeeding in public. King told Watt he considers his store a private space, and was worried that the child might have burped or otherwise messed on his merchandise.
After the incident, Watt decided to go public, saying she wants to raise awareness that breastfeeding is allowed in public spaces.
Full disclosure: Over the years, I have been a customer of Farmhouse, and I have also twice been a breastfeeding mother, so therefore have a connection with both camps, and their points of view, but this silly scrap is about something else altogether:
Common decency.
A furniture store is not part of the global La Leche League commune, and not everyone agrees, or is comfortable, with the sight of suckling babes tugging on bare breasts in public.
So what's wrong with putting a receiving blanket over the baby and your boob if you want to breastfeed in a store? What's the big deal about going back to your car, turning on the heat and feeding the baby while the toddlers listen to Raffiin the back seat? Why would you think it's appropriate, much less your right, to slurp and burp a baby on a chair that a retailer is trying to sell and someone else might want to buy sans spittle?
In a perfect world, public breastfeeding wouldn't be an issue. And in many countries, it's not. But the world isn't perfect, and in this country not everyone shares the let-it-all-hang-out ethos of the direct-action nursing mom. Some people think bare-boobed public breastfeeding is vulgar or sexual or culturally inappropriate. Others, especially citizens of the older vintage who were born to a different era of decorum, are embarrassed by it.
You don't have to like that, or agree with it, but surely it's not that big a sacrifice to respect it.
This is not an issue about a breastfeeding mom's rights, or society's skewed view of boobs, or even whether or not a business owner has the legal right to ask a breastfeeding mom to cover up or move out of public view.
It's about an individual's ability to size up a situation and employ basic common sense, and decency, and respect for others. The same kind of respect that dictates we don't wear a bikini to a funeral, or say the F-word in front of Grandma, or wear a hat at the dinner table, or walk naked through a children's playground.
We live in a civil society where there are rules and boundaries of social behaviour, where we conduct ourselves according to a tacitly understood code of common etiquette that overrides any one person, or group's, right to do as they please.
sfralic@vancouversun.com
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Etiquette+lesso
Etiquette lesson for breastfeeding moms: Cover up
Etiquette lesson for breastfeeding moms: Cover up
This is not a rights issue, it's about an individual's ability to size up a situation and employ basic common sense and respect for others
By Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun January 14, 2011
If it's a brand new year, it must surely be time for the latest instalment of The Young and The Breastfeeding, that perennial public soap opera whereby an earnest breastfeeding mother battles a villainous merchant because the retailer has the gall, the nerve, to ask her not to nurse her baby openly in his store.
Cue the outrage, and hand-wringing, the protesting and indignant maternal angst as we watch another angry young mom act out against the slight, the insult, the perceived discrimination -- so much so that she takes her tale to the media and even stars in a video about her treatment at the hands of the devil, spending more time grousing about her hurt feelings than, say, breastfeeding her baby.
The plot of our latest episode is this: Samantha Watt was shopping at Farmhouse Collections furniture store in Vancouver last weekend, with her 10-month-old son Damian and her two toddlers in tow, when the baby wanted lunch. She says it was too cold to feed him in the car, so she plopped down in an armchair and began breastfeeding, apparently eschewing the niceties of a coverup. And then along came store owner Kelly King, who asked her to stop, saying two customers had complained.
Watt declined, citing previous cases and the B.C. Human Rights Code, which dictates it is illegal to discriminate or harass a woman breastfeeding in public. King told Watt he considers his store a private space, and was worried that the child might have burped or otherwise messed on his merchandise.
After the incident, Watt decided to go public, saying she wants to raise awareness that breastfeeding is allowed in public spaces.
Full disclosure: Over the years, I have been a customer of Farmhouse, and I have also twice been a breastfeeding mother, so therefore have a connection with both camps, and their points of view, but this silly scrap is about something else altogether:
Common decency.
A furniture store is not part of the global La Leche League commune, and not everyone agrees, or is comfortable, with the sight of suckling babes tugging on bare breasts in public.
So what's wrong with putting a receiving blanket over the baby and your boob if you want to breastfeed in a store? What's the big deal about going back to your car, turning on the heat and feeding the baby while the toddlers listen to Raffiin the back seat? Why would you think it's appropriate, much less your right, to slurp and burp a baby on a chair that a retailer is trying to sell and someone else might want to buy sans spittle?
In a perfect world, public breastfeeding wouldn't be an issue. And in many countries, it's not. But the world isn't perfect, and in this country not everyone shares the let-it-all-hang-out ethos of the direct-action nursing mom. Some people think bare-boobed public breastfeeding is vulgar or sexual or culturally inappropriate. Others, especially citizens of the older vintage who were born to a different era of decorum, are embarrassed by it.
You don't have to like that, or agree with it, but surely it's not that big a sacrifice to respect it.
This is not an issue about a breastfeeding mom's rights, or society's skewed view of boobs, or even whether or not a business owner has the legal right to ask a breastfeeding mom to cover up or move out of public view.
It's about an individual's ability to size up a situation and employ basic common sense, and decency, and respect for others. The same kind of respect that dictates we don't wear a bikini to a funeral, or say the F-word in front of Grandma, or wear a hat at the dinner table, or walk naked through a children's playground.
We live in a civil society where there are rules and boundaries of social behaviour, where we conduct ourselves according to a tacitly understood code of common etiquette that overrides any one person, or group's, right to do as they please.
sfralic@vancouversun.com
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Etiquette+lesso
Here would be my one question to the store owner of this story:
If it was a bottle-feeding mother who had sat down on your merchandise to feed her baby, would you ask her to leave too for fear of the spit-up?
If he would say 'yes', then at least he is being consistent and he couldn't be accused of harrassing a BF'ing mother. However, my guess is that if it had been a bottle-feeding mother, then the other patrons would not have complained and therefore the store owner would never have approached the mother. Hence the problem.
When a mother is being harrassed for feeding her baby because she is feeding with a breast, it is discrimination of a BF'ing mother. In any given situation, the breast feeding mother and bottle feeding mother should be treated the same.
<<A furniture store is not part of the global La Leche League commune, and not everyone agrees, or is comfortable, with the sight of suckling babes tugging on bare breasts in public.>>
No one is advocating for mothers being able to BF topless or with fully exposed breast and there is no reason to believe that this mothers had her breasts fully exposed.This is another exaggeration of how most nursing mothers BF in public, either due to having seen few if any mother's NIP'ing or because they know criticizing discrete BF'ing that does not involve a cover would not garner the same level of support.This women is underestimating the hassle of having to go to one's car in very cold weather to accommodate some unjust concern about seeing a women BF'ing. There is this unproven implication that seeing a mother NIP'ing without a cover with even less skin showing then many young women routinely put on display, that that will cause long lasting psychological harm to the onlooker and that fuels many of these arguments against NIP.
<<So what's wrong with putting a receiving blanket over the baby and your boob if you want to breastfeed in a store? What's the big deal about going back to your car, turning on the heat and feeding the baby while the toddlers listen to Raffiin the back seat>>
Not all babies are comfortable nursing under a blanket and it's possible to be discrete enough without a cover. I just don't see any real harm to anyone from seeing real harm
<<Why would you think it's appropriate, much less your right, to slurp and burp a baby on a chair that a retailer is trying to sell and someone else might want to buy sans spittle?>>
If the issue was simply her misusing one of the chairs for sale for feeding her child without any concern by the owner what the the method of feeding was then I might agree the store owner asking her to not use store merchandise to sit on while feeding her infant but I'm not convinced that the fact the feeding method was BF'ing did not play a role.
<<In a perfect world, public breastfeeding wouldn't
be an issue. And in many countries, it's not. But the world isn't
perfect, and in this country not everyone shares the let-it-all-hang-out
ethos of the direct-action nursing mom. Some people think bare-boobed
public breastfeeding is vulgar or sexual or culturally inappropriate.
Others, especially citizens of the older vintage who were born to a
different era of decorum, are embarrassed by it. You don't have to like that, or agree with it, but surely it's not that big a sacrifice to respect it.>>
It's a lot more of a sacrifice then she realizes and besides I think their is a basic principle that justifies not caving to certain people's unjust concerns about seeing NIP even if it was not that inconvenient for nursing moms to accommodate these people's hang-ups. What if the issue was a black man and his white wife holding hands in public and some older racist man (or women) who grew up in Deep South of the early 20th century U.S. finds them-self very disturbed at the sight of such interracial relationship, should their views be accommodated? Should said couple not have any contact with each other in public so as not offend the racists out there? Sometimes we as a society realize that some people's bigotry, fears, and hang-ups are not justified and we force them to respect others people rights even if at first they are disturb by it. Gradually, many of them learn to accept it even if they may not always agree with it. In the case of anti-miscegenation attitudes, many people who where formally would have been disturb at the sight of an interracial couple learned to be OK with it. They realized that it was not the horrible downfall of society they once thought. Many people who have exaggerated views of what seeing women NIP all over the place will mean for them or young children will learn that it really not that big of a deal.
<<This is not an issue about a breastfeeding mom's rights, or society's skewed view of boobs, or even whether or not a business owner has the legal right to ask a breastfeeding mom to cover up or move out of public view. It's about an individual's ability to size up a situation and employ basic common sense, and decency, and respect for others.>>
I disagree. The problem here is that different people having different ideas about what constitutes decency and there are many things we do in public all the time some people consider indecent and disrespectful but which no one would suggest we stop doing becuase their is a general consensus that those who object hold outdated views on the issues in question. For example, someone with Victorian views on the appropriateness of a women showing her knee in public would never be expected by most people to be accommodated out of respect for decency or whatnot. We would rightly criticize the person expecting women to cover her knees in public. The same would apply orthodox Jew or Muslim who expected all women to wear headscarves out of modesty. There are countless examples of things few these days would consider indecent or disrespectful but which where once considered so. There where periods of transition in which the older generation through a fuss but gradually every adjusted. Take for example the Bikini, few would be concerned these days with seeing bikini clad women at the beach because we have since adjusted to the shock of the sight of a bikini. The same will hold true for NIP and the critics will eventually come to realize seeing it in public is really not that big of a deal.
<<The same kind of respect that dictates we don't wear a bikini to a funeral, or say the F-word in front of Grandma, or wear a hat at the dinner table, or walk naked through a children's playground.>>
I think the issue of the appropriateness of bikini wearing at a traditional funeral or walking naked through a public playground is a bit different then discrete NIP. I think there is much more inconvenience to mom and baby when you restrict NIP in the way she advocates then if people refrain wearing bikinis to funerals or a prevented by law from running naked through a public playground.
<<We live in a
civil society where there are rules and boundaries of social behavior,
where we conduct ourselves according to a tacitly understood code of
common etiquette that overrides any one person, or group's, right to do
as they please.>>
While that true to some degree, there are limits to what society can impose on individuals based constitutional protections and laws that force us to respect certain rights of minority groups such a minority religious groups, those with expressing unpopular speech, or in this case nursing moms NIP'ing. When significant minorities of individuals start to question then certain rules and boundaries of society you can start to see more and more people also start to question why and gradually you get enough support for a massive change in the rule as we saw for example women;'s rights as a whole in the 20th century. There were people who insisted the feminist of the past respect the rules and boundaries that existed then but thankfully they ignored that request and pushed through massive changes in woman's place in our society. If this women thinks we need to maintain outdated society rules and boundaries as traditional applied to NIP during the mid 20th century then she needs to come up with a better justification for sticking with the old rules then she has. Society's rules and boundaries are subject to change and she needs to accept that
jessica765 wrote:
Charleen, I actually totally agree with just about everything in your post, but I think this is an overstatement. I don't think this person's argument (or the argument of most people who oppose uncovered NIP) is that it will cause "long lasting psychological harm"--that's largely a straw man. Usually the argument is that it violates the rules of polite society and does so unnecessarily (I don't agree, but that's the argument.)
Let's look at it this way. Most everyone agrees that not everything that might make someone out their in this world uncomfortable to be seeing in public should be banned. We all have some notion that some things should be allowed in public even if a few people might not like seeing them. So what that means to me is that there must be some justification beyond simple consideration and respect for others as to why women should not NIP or not NIP without a cover. They must believe that it would harm society in some way if those uncomfortable with NIP where subjected to seeing it all the time in public.Maybe in some case the NIP critic really does no see the not NIP'ing or using a cover to NIP as a major inconvenience and thinks "why not just accommodate those who don't want to see it since it not that inconvenient for you to do so and it would the the nice thing to do, even if these people would not suffer any harm from seeing NIP." I suspect though that most NIP critics do think it cause some sort of harm to be subjected to unwanted viewing of NIP, especially to children who might come across it.
