To think a man has no place at a breastfeeding support group

[Was1anddone]

Went to a local breastfeeding group today ran by the local council and was surprised to see a boyfriend/husband in tow.

I had visited because I had a latching problem that needed the consultant’s hands on support, like many women do. I happily feed in front of male strangers and family members when baby is hungry, but this is not as ‘intimate’ as coming to a clinic where the lactation consultant may need women to expose their breasts, manoeuvre babies and do compressions.

I expressed my suspense to the consultant who wasn’t very happy to see him there and asked if I needed to go somewhere more private. So I spent my breastfeeding support session in between two bookshelves in a children’s centre, which wasn’t what I had in mind.

i’m going to check with the council for clarification but but AIBU to think this should be women only? Nothing about it was appropriate at all, and he was very much ‘watching’ all of us.

there are plenty of things men can do to be equal parents and be involved in the process. If he wanted consultant level advice on how to support his partner with feeding- he could have arranged a £20 zoom session. Why can’t we just have a bloody breastfeeding session?

yes the woman may be ND or have anxiety (didn’t get those vibes from her at all though- presented as NT and very chatty and personable but I understand needs can be hidden or masked) but surely a female chaperone or friend would be more appropriate? And if she didn’t have this the council should offer something more suitable? Our dignity shouldn’t be second to her requirements, if this was the case.

my breastfeeding problem needs lots of compressions and swapping sides so my support was greatly hindered by him being there having a laugh and a cuppa. I’m so pissed off :(

It’s not a “gotcha”. @Curtayne Why would you assume I’m trying to be goady? This is a discussion forum, I’m asking a genuine question, not everyone has to fall into one of two extreme opposing positions.

I’m a pregnant lesbian, whose wife gave birth to our first kid. I’m about to start negotiating the world of breastfeeding support groups, NCT’s and post natal wards from a different perspective (birthing mother) to the one I had with our first kid (non birthing mother). And as this thread is about this topic, I thought I’d ask to see what people think about that scenario.

I also really liked my breastfeeding group, it was the first time I'd been out alone with the baby at nine days old and it was really lovely to be with other new mums who had been through it themselves. I remember a man at the door looking in like a goldfish in a bowl but not entering and thinking it was really nice to have a space that was just for women.

Trans women can be induced to lactate/ breastfeed.

Ridiculous. Up to the group organizers to say something to stop this nonsense.

This makes me feel terrible.

I took my boyfriend to one of these on D3 of DS life after I had spent the entire night trying and failing to get him to latch onto the left side. I was in agony and took him so that he could help/remember advice and then help with latch later on.

I don’t know. Maybe I was selfish but at the time I didn’t think of anything other than trying to get help to BF and that required my boyfriend to come with me to help me navigate/remember when I hadn’t slept for 24 hours.

If we really want these sessions to be women only then we should be advertising them as such. TBH this would just have represented a major barrier to my BF and could well have stopped me from continuing. So maybe, men should just be normal and not stare?

Oh my word.
”People who identify as women “
They have zero place to be on a BF group in my opinion.

Oh FFS
False equivalence.

Women don't tend to perve & stare in the way many men do.
Whether they are bi, lesbian, or straight.
It's got nothing to do with orientation, & everything to do with male entitlement.

But they don't identify as women, so then what?

My friend had a man there. Turns out he was a trans man who had a baby who then went on to breastfeed!

If you were offered another room or a private area, would that be ok?

A simple solution, really.

I am disabled and would need my DH to come with me for something like that. So the simple option for me would be a female friend or family member comes with me or I pay for a home visit for DH to be there with me. No way would he feel comfortable coming to a session like that and I wouldn’t ask him or think it was appropriate

You're doing the right thing contacting the council and determing their policy. It may be a case of a clear women-only policy that is not being clearly communicated or enforced, a one-time mistake (human error), or there's currently no formal woman-only policy and you'll have to make the case for one. As the consultant was also blindsided by his presence and appeared not to know how to handle it, it's good for the council to think about how people running the individual sessions can be better supported as well.

I'm sure there are cases of women who can't attend these groups without a caregiver and their usual caregiver is male, but best for the council to be aware of these special needs and either look for new ways to accomodate them or be more active in publicising the accomodations that are already available. As a side note (purely subjective and anecdotal) an experienced male caregiver used to working with women in intimite group situations will almost always be conscious of his behaviour and be careful NOT to stare at others in the group. (Of course it's possible the staring was caused by a physical condition on the part of the carer.)

Faciadipasta: He wasn't staring at anyone except me though and he asked the group whether anyone minded him attending when we arrived. Everyone said they didn't mind, and we sat off to the side. He shouldn't have been asking the other attendees directly and in public; there is a lot of pressure in these situations to say that someone who's already in can stay, to not be the person who is seen to delay the start of the session, etc. Best to contact the organiser and look into options, there may be separate women-only and mixed groups available, or private sessions.

Handbagsandfabs: Alternatively if you’re so concerned about a man being at a group you can pay for private support. The OPs needs aren’t greater than this other woman’s. No one has said they are; people are saying that the collective and individual needs of women using a breastfeeding support group take precedent over the apparent wants of a random man. If there was a genuine need on behalf of the client (the women this man was with), she could have communicated that to that to the organizer ahead of time.

Handbagsandfabs: Seems every other woman at this group was fine with it, as the OP was the only one to kick up a fuss. This is purely your invention and so ignorant of the reality of breastfeeding, of women-only groups, and of the social conditions around women's need for privacy in intimite situations that it reads as borderline misogynist.

In other words, your friend had a woman there.

No, they're not the same..

Because breasts are fetishised and groped by strange men. I don't know any men who have had their penises groped by strange women

You didn't do anything wrong.

It is the group leader's responsibility to be clear if it is women only.

If he was allowed to be there, then he was allowed to be there.

Please don't worry.

I've not read the full thread so splodges if this has been said but as a HCP I ask partners to wait outside my examination room.
If the woman is being abused (and one in 4 women have been abused st some point, numbers also rise during pregnancy and after birth), then this could be her only chance to alert someone.
Best practice is he wants outside, and this is before the added complication of having partially undressed females present.

That’s an XX
A Trans man is just not threatening like a XY is.

Will use clear points as to why my husband came

1. DS1 was in NICU after his birth, and for quite specific reasons, after a vert stressful struggle, I wasn't able to breast feed. This, yes, left me with some issues

2. DS2 was a long difficult labour and delivery. He was very difficult to breast feed but I was insanely determined. By the time I visited the breast feeding cafe I'd had 10 days of trying to feed, pumping, feeding expressed milk on a spoon and basically not sleeping. I was dazed and lost and desperate.

3. Breastfeeding worker was able to show husband what he could do to support me. A female friend or relative (neither available, but if they had been..) wouldn't be there at 2am, or 4am when I needed help. I needed him to help.

4. In my desperation I had rung non NHS breastfeeding places, but none were able to offer me any in person help. Which is what I needed.

5. The NHS only offered breast feeding cafes, not 1:1 help.

6. When your baby is in NICU you are trying to establish breast feeding, with help from staff, in front of who ever is in there including the fathers of other babies. They don't have curtains in NICU to hide behind.

The first time I went to one of these groups with my firstborn I took my DH (baby was about 2 weeks old). I was all over the place with massive feeding issues and we'd been in and out of hospital.
In hindsight, I was wrong to bring him and never did again. But on that day i was such a mess mentally and all over the place and really didn't think properly about other womenMs needs.
I made a mistake.
Maybe she and her DH did too? Did they seem like first timers?

But the OP did not go to a clinic, she attended a breastfeeding support group which is very different. The groups are aimed to be a supportive environment for women usually with breastfeeding peer supporters and a counsellor there.

YANBU but according to MN (and excluding any trans debate) there should be zero female only spaces because there will always be a reason, legitimate only to them, why a man needs to be there to support them - so screw anyone else’ feelings or opinions.

the group is for ‘women and those who self identify as women’

Transmen are women and transmen so they are included.

Transwomen are also included which is very inappropriate. Any difficulties a TW may have in BFing are very specialist and not relevant to a general BF group.

i can’t imagine any normal bloke would dream of going to one of these sessions. They’d run a mile.

and they should be default female only.

I worked in a night club as a student - it was near constant that men were groped. They're expected to put up, shut up and enjoy it. Come out from under your rock every once in a while?