To be getting fed up of these type of jumping on the band wagon breastfeeding threads

[sharonthewaspandthewineywall]

here

FTR I'm very pro breastfeeding and think where children are permitted mothers should be able to feed their babies in whichever way they choose. But to me this is a completely different situation and this running to the papers screaming about the inequity of it all is pointless and doesnt actually help in cases where people do breach the equality act.
So AIBU?

I am A teacher - if I wanted to bring in my 16 month old because my childcare had fallen through I would be told 'erm......no'.

As would most people in the real world

And If I went back to supply teaching at 11 weeks post partum and asked if a babysitter could sit in the staff room with the baby and could I pop out in the middle of class to go and feed the baby, again I'm pretty sure I would be told 'no'. Quite right as well. So why is this case any different?

"leedy, so what you're asking for then isn't to be able to take children into work a la Licia Ronzulli - which is the image I got from posts in this thread - you want daycare facilities"

Eh, I wasn't asking for anything - I wasn't the person who said mums should be able to bring their kids into work under any circumstances, I said that that wouldn't be practical in most jobs unless everywhere had onsite childcare or worked from home, not that I particularly felt it should be the case.

~"And If I went back to supply teaching at 11 weeks post partum and asked if a babysitter could sit in the staff room with the baby and could I pop out in the middle of class to go and feed the baby, again I'm pretty sure I would be told 'no'"

Yes, because that's exactly the same as a musician playing a short set at a club having her baby nearby for before and after her performance.

But they unquestionably have no duty to refuse to allow children onto their premises in any circumstances

Complete and utter rubbish.

You've also just contradicted yourself by mentioning 'heavy machinery' etc, because that comes under 'any circumstances'.

Yes, because that's exactly the same as a musician playing a short set at a club having her baby nearby for before and after her performance.

The debate has move on somewhat from the original occurrence, that poster may be in response to the PP who states that all women should be able to take their children into work.

Regardless, there wouldn't be able to be one rule for one and another for someone else if it was to come into some sort of legislation.

" I said that that wouldn't be practical in most jobs unless everywhere had onsite childcare or worked from home"

For 99.9% of human history women have had to be economically productive while lactating. What do you think poor women in developing countries who work in agriculture do? Or self-employed women running market stalls or producing goods at home do?

It's only modern women, with paid maternity leave, who overwhelmingly find lactating too difficult to do for more than a few weeks, and need to be paid a salary by the state or by employers to sit at home and do it.

"could I pop out in the middle of class to go and feed the baby"

But in this case she wasn't going to pop out in the middle of the gig to feed the baby, she was going to feed the baby at the interval. It wasn't a case of "I will bring the baby and feed it during the concert if I feel like it".

Pretty much all of the arguments used here - that lactating women and their babies are a nuisance in the workplace, and that accommodating the needs of new mothers will make businesses less competitive, have been used in the past to justify employers discriminating against disabled people.

But they unquestionably have no duty to refuse to allow children onto their premises in any circumstances, and they absolutely are entitled to assume that if a parent brings a child onto those premises they will take be primarily responsible for that child's safety.

Yes, an employer could refuse to have children on the premises if they deem, through a risk assessment for instance, that they could not ensure the health and safety of that child.

No, the responsibility still lies with the employer. The employer's duty of care and the parent's duty of care are considered as concurrent and separate, so the parent can be an utter fuckwit with regards to looking after the child but if the employer has not taken all reasonably practicable measures to ensure the health and safety of the child then the employer can be prosecuted.

root

Ah yes, a nice sentence to insinuate those against having babies in the workplace are simply ignorant narrow minded bigots akin to those who are ableist.

We see many stay at home mums on these forums who say having a child is a full time job, they can't clean and cook at the same time etc, yet some women on here believe that their child won't affect their work or anyone elses?

And unfortunately the majority of modern day women don't work in crop fields and lash their baby to their backs. We work in professional establishments.

"It's only modern women, with paid maternity leave, who overwhelmingly find lactating too difficult to do for more than a few weeks, and need to be paid a salary by the state or by employers to sit at home and do it."

I've actually been breastfeeding pretty much without a break for five years now and have a full time job, so actually no, I neither found it too difficult to do for more than a few weeks nor needed to be paid to do nothing but lactate.

I do however have a job that, unlike strapping a child on my back and engaging in subsistence farming, I can't do while simultaneously looking after a baby. Or are you arguing we should all return to the fields?

"the majority of modern day women don't work in crop fields and lash their baby to their backs. We work in professional establishments."

Yes - we work in far less physically taxing and physically involving jobs, where having to hold and feed a baby might be a real impediment.

If people can write novels and run countries while breastfeeding a small baby then I don't see why women who have ordinary professional jobs can't do the same.

Norway passed new legislation this year that means employers must pay breastfeeding mothers for breastfeeding breaks during the working day - from the Eurofound website report:

The dominant employers’ organisation, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), supported the rationale behind the policy but has criticised the obligation placed on employers to foot the bill for breastfeeding breaks. Employers’ organisation Virke argued that employers might decide not to accept the higher costs associated with employing women and choose to hire men instead for practical and economic reasons.

Leedy - in what way is doing something intellectually challenging more impossible to do while breastfeeding than a job which requires constant physical engagement USUALLY USING BOTH HANDS. ;-)

The problem isn't the physical side of it, it is logistics.

You cannot expect an employer to allow a woman to pop out as she pleases to feed her child. Babies don't work like clockwork.

And with that, it would also mean children would have to be in close vicinity.

Jesus are we seriously wanting to go back to the days when mums were tied to their children

It does make me wonder what sort of workplaces some people work in and what job roles they have if nipping off to feed a child whenever they need it is in anyway doable.

And what about cluster feeding that so many on MN complain about - you'd get no work done at all

"in what way is doing something intellectually challenging more impossible to do while breastfeeding than a job which requires constant physical engagement"

It's not the "while breastfeeding" bit that's challenging (though it does involve typing one handed), it's the entire rest of babycare. And while some babies might be amenable to being strapped to their mother's back while she goes out to work the fields, I don't think either of mine would have been happy to just lie there while I, er, worked the internet, went to meetings, etc. Or did you all have the kind of placid infants that would let you write a novel while on maternity leave, etc.?

To be honest, in my current job I possibly could just pop off and feed the baby every so often if there was onsite child-care, especially if I used the time to read/write emails (it's what I did when I took a daily expressing break).

And as I said, I do have a taxing job while breastfeeding a toddler, I just don't bring him to work. Nor indeed was the musician in question planning on actually bringing the baby on stage with her, fwiw.

Nor indeed was the musician in question planning on actually bringing the baby on stage with her, fwiw.

Absolutely correct. However, she WAS planning on bringing him into a place where under 12s are not allowed.

premises means the actual premises.

not just the bits customers see.

The people I work with barely have time for a pee because of the workload never mind breastfeeding - and before someone says 'well this is the companies fault' yes we know, despite being one of the largest employers in the world nothing is going to change anytime soon.