by Peggy O'Mara
I've just returned from giving a television interview about breastfeeding in public. I was asked to comment on the situation involving Emily Gillette and her 23-month-old daughter. Shortly after boarding a commercial airplane, Gillette was asked by a flight attendant to cover up with a blanket while she was breastfeeding. When Gillette declined the blanket, the flight attendant demanded that she and her family leave the airplane. As this was the last flight of the evening from Burlington, Vermont, Gillette and her family were forced to find accommodations late at night and fly out the next day. Their offense: breastfeeding in public.
Gillette lives in New Mexico, where 82 percent of mothers initiate breastfeeding and 70 percent are still nursing at three months. That first statistic surpasses the national average of 70 percent initiation, and tops the US Health and Human Services goal of 75 percent initiation by 2010. She is already part of a breastfeeding culture. Gillette is also part of a breastfeeding culture as a reader of Mothering magazine. Ninety-six percent of our readers initiate breastfeeding, and 80 percent are still nursing at one year and beyond.
These mothers are following the recommendations of the World Health Organization, which encourages breastfeeding for at least the child's first two years. In other words, they are following doctor's orders.
The risks of not breastfeeding are significant. The 2005 Progress Report on Breastfeeding, issued at the 49th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women, concludes that increasing the incidence of exclusive breastfeeding in the US would reduce the rate of death for children under five by 19 percent.
According to UNICEF, if infants worldwide were fed only mother's milk for their first six months, at least 1.3 million lives a year would be saved. In the first two months of life, an infant who is not exclusively breastfed is up to 25 times more likely than an exclusively breastfed baby to die from diarrhea, and four times more likely to die from pneumonia.
As these outstanding benefits and unacceptable risks make breastfeeding not a lifestyle choice but a health mandate, it is only a matter of time before the US as a whole becomes a breastfeeding culture. In order to do this, however, obviously we must have more breastfeeding. And in order to increase breastfeeding, we must encourage mothers to nurse in public. Breastfeeding in public is essential to successful breastfeeding because babies simply cannot wait to be fed. Whether bottle-fed or breastfed, babies need to eat often; if they are in public with their parents for extended periods of time, they will have to be fed.
No one gives a second thought to bottle-feeding in public. In fact, images of baby bottles are ubiquitous in popular culture and are sometimes even used in public places to designate nursery facilities. Despite the health mandate, a society saturated with such images can make a new mom feel that breastfeeding is out of the ordinary, or even abnormal. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, lack of public support for breastfeeding is one of the obstacles to its success. Fortunately, studies show that 93 percent of people in the US are just fine with breastfeeding in public.
When we published "Taking Down the Almighty Bottle," Stephanie Ondrack's article about breastfeeding in a bottle-feeding culture (Mothering, July-August 2006), our Art Director, Laura Egley Taylor, wondered whether a universal symbol for breastfeeding existed. We were surprised to find that it does not. While Canada and Singapore have such symbols, neither image is in wide use or compatible with international signage styles. The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), along with the US Department of Transportation, created the 50 standard symbols used by US sign companies today, but they did not include one for breastfeeding.
So, from July through mid-November 2006, Mothering held a contest to create a universal breastfeeding symbol. We received more than 500 entries from both the design and breastfeeding communities. A public vote was held on www.mothering.com, and votes were solicited from the major breastfeeding organizations.
The winning symbol was designed by Matt Daigle. Matt has been kind enough to assign his symbol design to the public domain, which means that it is copyright-free. We have made downloadable images of the symbol available free, and offer stickers for sale. I encourage you to use this symbol. Most important, we hope that a universal symbol will increase public awareness of breastfeeding. The symbol could also be used to designate baby-friendly and breastfeeding-friendly facilities in large public spaces.
Of course, breastfeeding does not require a special place. As the Canadian government's slogan says, it is appropriate "anytime, anywhere." The purpose of the symbol is not to segregate breastfeeding in any way, but to help better integrate it into society by better accommodating it in public.
For example, sometimes there is nowhere comfortable to feed the baby—or, for the mother separated from her baby, nowhere to plug in an electric breast pump. Mothers welcome private places in public where they can collect themselves and their children. This symbol could designate such places.
How do we use the symbol? We've already gotten a photo of the symbol posted on the front of a store in Redding, California, that sells cloth diapers, baby slings, and breastfeeding supplies. While we'll all probably want to use it as a bumper sticker, it is more about a specific place than a point of view.
The symbol will be most appropriate and helpful in large, public places where people remain for extended periods of time, such as airports, malls, and amusement parks, as well as conventions, expos, and other large international events. It could also be used in professional offices, retail establishments, or restaurants to indicate that these places are breastfeeding-friendly. However, its absence should not imply "breastfeeding-unfriendly," for breastfeeding in public is a basic human right. The symbol could also be used in businesses to designate a specific lactation room, as now required by law in California.
In public places, the use of this symbol could follow in the tradition of the family bathrooms one sees in large airports. These breastfeeding- and baby-friendly places could be located in or near restrooms, which often are the only private places to be found in otherwise public spaces. If such restrooms also have a comfortable chair and perhaps an electric plug, they could accommodate the feeding needs of most infants. And, like changing tables, they should be available to moms and dads. Everyone wants to feel welcome in public, and we feel welcome as parents when our needs are accommodated.
We once published an article on Sweden that included photos of the various signs used there to indicate child-friendly facilities (More Than Welcome: Families Come First in Sweden by Brittany Shahmehri, November-December 2001). One purpose of a breastfeeding symbol is to help more US families feel more welcome in public. The TV reporter asked me today why I thought some people were uncomfortable with breastfeeding in public. First, it's a cultural bias. Many of us, like Emily Gillette, are part of a breastfeeding culture and are therefore so accustomed to seeing breastfeeding that we hardly give it a second thought. Others, like the flight attendant, are presumably part of a bottle-feeding culture and are thus unaccustomed to breastfeeding, particularly to extended breastfeeding. It is common for human beings to be suspicious of things they are unfamiliar with.
Second, it is also common for human beings to be fascinated with things they have seldom or never seen before, to stare and gawk and appear rude in the face of the new fascination. Sometimes people who are unfamiliar with breastfeeding interpret their quite normal fascination as prurient or are simply embarrassed by their own responses. People new to seeing breastfeeding may interpret their inability to stop staring as evidence that breastfeeding has sexual overtones. It does not.
Both of these reasons, however, are prejudices, and we cannot afford to accommodate prejudice if we are to be a healthy society. There is nothing inherently offensive about breastfeeding—quite the contrary. When a person feels uncomfortable, it is his or her beliefs, not breastfeeding itself, that are the problem. This lack of comfort is not a legitimate reason to impose those beliefs on others. People who are offended by breastfeeding just have to get over it, or remove themselves from the situation.
Mothering has often run into this sort of fear and prejudice. I was amused to read last fall that another parenting publication had proudly announced the radical act of publishing a photo of breastfeeding on their cover. We've been doing that for years, and have sometimes been dismayed to find that our magazines have been removed from newsstands or covered up, even in natural-foods stores.
In all cases, we have found that the act of removing the magazine from the shelves was a reactive response to a customer complaint, and often in violation of the store's existing policy. Without exception, the store management apologized to us and, if there was not already such a policy in place, instituted a written policy for distinguishing between pornography and images of breastfeeding. And they always put the magazine back on the stands.
Emily Gillette has filed a complaint against Delta Air Lines and Freedom Airlines with the Vermont Human Rights Commission. Breastfeeding is protected in Vermont under the state's Public Accommodations Act. Gillette wants to make sure that breastfeeding is protected on these two airlines as well.
We, too, want to protect breastfeeding. Imagine with us a breastfeeding-friendly society. As this issue was going to press, we heard about a nurse-in at national airports in support of Gillette's request. One of the goals of the nurse-in is to introduce the new breastfeeding symbol. We're eager to see how it is accepted, and where it goes. Please send us photos of the symbol in use. And keep on breastfeeding.
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