how to handle an expressing mother in class. WWYD?

[susanjones123]

NC because this will definitely out me to any colleagues or students.

One of my students (I'm an HE lecturer) had 6 months off recently to have a baby. She's now returned to study which is great and we are delighted to have her back. The department has been very accommodating for her and let her miss classes, leave early when necessary, bring her baby to meetings etc.

So far, so fine.

She's still BFing and using expressed milk when her DH does the feeding. She uses an electric pump. The problem is that she uses the pump in the classroom. I don't mean in the actual class, during the lectures but at the beginning when everyone is arriving and sometimes during group work activities. I, personally, find this very off-putting (not putting me off my teaching but just generally quite off-putting) and other students have commented quite negatively.

As the main academic she has contact with, I feel as though it falls to me to have a word about this but I'm really unsure how to handle it.

I bottle-fed both of mine from day 1 so I'd really appreciate the experiences of people who have BF on this, please.

BoomBoom I think you have some odd ideas about universities, their functions and roles.

Really?

I thought boom was pretty spot on, but then, I've only been at university for the last decade and now I teach there now, so my view is rather skewed towards universities now, and they have changed quite a bit (in ways older academics don't always like much).

Really Phaed? You think the university isn't providing a service for money?

My DH is a professor. He thinks I'm a bit stroppy in my views, but have the core down.

Of course universities are (usually) non-profit institutions, they aren't there just to take money from students (or grant making bodies) they often have a mission to further knowledge through research and teaching. But that doesn't change the nature of the contract with the student really (except perhaps to make the university "need" the student more).

Can you explain your take on universities?

You seem to view universities as some sort of adult nursery school. They are there to provide tertiary education and to further research in the various subjects.

Can't find the source (hopefully someone else can) but I'm sure I've read that women can legally express anywhere they can breastfeed. Why should that not be the case?

If it is truly disruptive of group work (although the reasons given seem to be more "it's eww") then perhaps they should have that discussion and kindly ask her to consider if she can do it elsewhere/another time (if you provide her somewhere appropriately comfortable).

If it's just about people worrying about boobs, then quite frankly, fuck them. Worry more about the huge effort your student is going to to continue her studies AND care for her child.

Perhaps some education all round on what breasts are for would be helpful.

I've just suggested they get on with providing the tertiary education, not impose restrictions on one of their students because other people feel "ick". Not really sure how that makes my view of universties akin to thinking they are nurseries.

I don't think that Boomboom is spot on at all. Universities are providing a service but then they always were. That doesn't make them similar to DisneyLand or Gym. Students don't go there to enjoy themselves; they go there to learn and if they don't learn they fail the course whether or not they have paid. The fact that students are paying the fees rather than the tax payer may have altered some students perceptions but actually universities don't behave any differently now towards students than they did 20 years ago in my experience.

I mostly teach postgraduate qualified professionals. They pay but that doesn't mean that we would accommodate their every requirement. There is no way one of them would expect to express during a a lecture or group discussion.

tobea - didn't mean any disrespect to older academics, I should've phrased that better.

Hmmm. Yes, universities are providing a paid service to students, but students are not ONLY consumers - they have to fulfill certain obligations, and if they don't, the university can make them leave. It's not the same as a person walking into a shop and buying something. If one student is disturbing the learning environment, a teacher is absolutely within his/her rights to ask that person to leave.

This is a very interesting thread that has made me think. I've done a lot of googling in relation to it (curiosity!) and I'm surprised by how little info there seems to be in the public realm about expressing and specifically about expressing in public.

leggings said, Can't find the source (hopefully someone else can) but I'm sure I've read that women can legally express anywhere they can breastfeed.

Nope. Definitely not the case.

There is loads of stuff on the web about a) women who want to breastfeed in public spaces (which is definitely their legal right in the UK), and b) women who want time and a private space to express milk in, in the workplace for example (which sadly isn't a legal right yet, as slithytove pointed out much earlier in the thread). I found virtually no examples of women wanting to express in public.

Comments on this thread follow the same pattern. Lots of women on the thread talk about expressing milk, lots talk about breastfeeding in public spaces, but no one (not even the commenters who think that women SHOULD have the right to express in public) seem to have experience of doing it on a regular basis. 5madthings wrote about expressing milk over a sink in a public toilet, but I suspect she would rather have been doing it in a nicer environment had a nicer environment been available.

So my point is that this woman (the OP's student) is quite unusual. As I said before, you have to be relaxed in order to get the milk flowing, and most women don't feel relaxed hooking up their breasts to an electric device in a roomful of onlookers. I'm pretty sure that 99 women out of 100 would rather have access to the quiet room and comfy chair instead. I certainly would. All the info I found on the web about lactation resources in HE just assumes that what women want is access to a room where she can use a breast pump; see for example www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/26/many-universities-still-have-ad-hoc-policies-about-lactation-resources#sthash.G4EjaU05.dpbs Or see this document: www.mmu.ac.uk/equality-and-diversity/pregnancy/student-pregnancy-and-maternity-implications-for-heis.pdf. It contains an example of the LSE's policy as good practice:

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) provides rest and breastfeeding facilities for staff and students. A specific room is provided in a central campus location for rest and breastfeeding – the room has a lockable door and contains comfortable chairs with footstools, a fridge, a microwave, handwashing facilities and lockers. LSE’s policy on supporting students during pregnancy and maternity also emphasises that common rooms can be used for resting.

If a student needs to breastfeed during lectures or seminars, a risk assessment is conducted by the student’s department to ensure the health and safety of the student and her baby, and any risks identified are managed by the LSE’s health and safety team. Where it is possible for the student to take her baby into lectures and seminars, the student is asked to ensure her baby is supervised at all times and to be considerate of other students.

That seems sensible to me. I find it very weird that the student didn't have a chat with the lecturer or department first. To me, that's just a matter of common courtesy. Maybe she didn't feel confident enough to do so, but given the way the OP describes her, as a feisty person, it seems more likely that she WANTS to make a statement about expressing in public. Which is fine, but I would not be happy for her to be making that statement during a class I was teaching when other options are available to her (expressing before and after class, leaving class to express in a room nearby). I would find it too disruptive, as I said before. Maybe some lecturers like LRD () wouldn't mind it, but I would.

Perhaps the bottom line here is that a woman who wants to express or breastfeed in a classroom context should have a conversation about it with the lecturer first. On occasions when I've had to go to conferences or workshops with my breast pump, I've emailed in advance to tell the organisers that I will need a room to express in. In my experience they have fallen all over themselves to oblige, as indeed I would do if anyone came to my institution with a similar request.

I'm just not feeling the sympathy for this student. At all. Sorry to have written an essay though.

It's making me think too. And I am aware it's waaaaay out of my experience so I probably shouldn't have posted. To put my cards on the table (if they're not already), I have issues around students who make disturbances being told they must stop for the good of others who really could manage to cope around them if they tried. Mostly, this is based on my experience with disabilities, and it's not entirely the same.

So, I do take your point.

Even shops can require their customers to adapt their behaviour- Wetherspoons has banned vaping, many shops decide only two children at a time, shops also ban topless men in summer (and women except when breastfeeding obviously).

I think that this has been an interesting discussion and I am not absolutely clear on my own stance either. I sometimes whether universities are so accommodating, it doesn't prepare students very well for the world of work. For example, I have students who have someone to read aloud the exam question, a scribe to write notes for them in class, and allowed to use a computer in a private room with no other noises in. I think that's entirely fair for the purposes of an exam- so that any disability they have doesn't disadvantage them in terms of their paper qualificiations, however if this spills into lectures and seminars, it can make it very difficult to sustain a discussion, or everyone give a presentation (e.g. as they have an anxiety disorder)- how on earth would this work in an office environment, which will be noisy, you won't have a scribe to take notes for you and you will be expected to produce your work without assistance.

So- reasonable accommodation and the removal of discrimination is sometimes a difficult balance to draw and I don't always think we get it right. I am relaxed about Masters students bringing children/babies in for the odd session, others on here have said that's completely unacceptable although there has never been an issue with it in my classes (as it's infrequent, due to childcare issues and children have always been extremely quiet/taken out if a problem).

I agree marfisa that the student/university relationship is a lot more complex than a gym membership. I was trying to contrast with the idea it was like an employee/employer relationship which I strongly disagree with. But it's not a perfect analogy.

I does bother me when I hear tertiary educators talk about preparing students in a normative way for work environments. One of the benefits of higher education should be the ability to see beyond the blinkers of your immediate culture and environment - all these "outside the box" thinkers industry wants. There is frequent talk about the need for diversity and then as soon as something makes people a little uneasy or requires change they snap back to a call for "professionalism", by which they mean conservative values. More and more people seem to look on university as a production centre, turning out perfect, identical worker units. But the big problems our institutions face generally boil down to too much group think and too little courage to contest embedded power. How are the people at the top of the professions and at the pinnacle of research going to find their way out of local maxima if they never look beyond their own kind?

There are many different ways of being professional, from IBMesq suits and ties, to Google's lego lounges and air guitar competitions. More conservative behaviours are just one way of doing things, and not a uniformly successful or desired way.

Yes, I'd like to know what happened [wi[confus too - ruddy tablet stuck some inappropriate symbols in there!

phew, they got turned into gobbledigook - glass of wine and daft face really not right for this thread. possibly...