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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I am the mother of a 3 month old child who is exclusively breastfed. I do not remove myself public situations when she needs to be fed, though I am always very discreet. By law I have the right to feed her anywhere I am otherwise allowed to go, and do not have to even be discreet about it.
There is a nursing mother’s room available at church, but it means that I have to carry her and al of her “equipment” across the building to the small hot, and frequently malodorous room that they have set aside. On top of that it means that I forfeit the right to participate in the worship service because there are always chatty moms in the room who turn off the intercom so it doesn’t interrupt their conversation.
However- nursing her during services sometimes has resulted in snide remarks or looks. Do I ignore the remarks, or am I truly being insensitive to other people to feed my baby in the best way I know how, without excusing myself?
While breastfeeding your child is a natural act that society should, and often does support, it is important to take into account the feelings of others in attendance during certain functions at certain locations. Had no other accommodation been made available, your decision to conduct the feeding in the sanctuary might be understandable, but that is not the case. If you find the room set aside for this function unacceptable, voice your opinion to the church administration and ask them to correct it. As it is, your insistence on doing this in the sanctuary may be seen as a disregard for church rules and lack of concern for other worshipers. If your baby cannot be fed before or after the service, pumping milk and leaving it with a nursery worker who can watch your baby, allowing you, and others, to worship undistracted, is the best solution. Church is a community activity and the community’s comfort and needs should come first before those of one individual or family.
While I can understand Grace’s concern for the church community, I find this kind of rationalization pernicious. Finally medicine and the US government have come on board with what mothers have known for millennium – that breastfeeding (when a mother is able to do it) is best for both mother and child. Our culture is in a period of transition – we both encourage (even guilt-trip) mothers into breastfeeding, which can be quite difficult physically and emotionally, and we sexualize breasts, making breastfeeding into something a little titillating or somehow improper in public life. Furthermore, new mothers feel pressure to nurse and then are shunned from the public sphere! How much more of a conflicting message can we send?? Personally, I reject this cultural attitude, and so do many others. In other cultures, it would be improper to show your forearms or calves. Luckily, culture is mutable, but it takes people willing to work for it. The more that new mothers nurse in public, the more normal it will be. If we as a society believe that breastfeeding really is best, then we have to make it as easy as we can for mothers to do it – even at the cost of our own (temporary) discomfort.
So, perhaps it would be a good idea to speak with the clergy or a layperson up the hierarchy in the church. I imagine that if the pastor made an announcement one morning to the effect that new mothers were henceforth to be welcomed and supported instead of shunned, the notion of ‘community comfort’ would shift very rapidly.
Elizabeth, kindly note I did not condemn breastfeeding, nor call for anything approaching shunning a nursing mother. If anything, a nursing room indicates a concern for accommodating the needs of mother and child, while also acknowledging others in attendance. I did call for selflessness on the mother’s part for the church at large and concern for others in attendance, rather than just the needs of one new mother and child. There is an element of overbearing selfishness in foisting acceptance of this behavior in a worship environment. If policy or doctrine in a particular church is not to one’s liking, it is important to remember that they may be for the majority already there.
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand why it is selfish to do the most selfless act possible – to nurse one’s child. Also, I wouldn’t assume that people and their attitudes can’t change. I prefer to think more highly of people.
Nobody is saying it is selfish to breast feed. They are saying that it is selfish to make a spectical of yourself and to go agaist the cultural norms by breast feeling in the middle of church. Breast feeding is a fine choice but like most choices in life there are pros and cons. One of the cons of breast feeding is that as a nursing mother you have the obligation to while feeding your baby find a modicum of privacy. The pros are many but this is a con and one that is part of the very valid choice to breast feed.
To use your logic it is a wonderful thing to bring a child into the world thus by your logic the act of conception is so wonderful as we should be all for it occuring in public at church. In the same way that that statement is patently absurd it is silly to assume that just because breastfeeding is a wonderful thing that it is appropriate in all places at all times. It is not and like the act of conception it should be performed in private so as not to bother and disturb others.
Alicia, infants eat frequently. The act of copulation does not need to occur every 30 -40 minutes. Your analogy is a poor one. Breastfeeding is hardly “a spectacle”.
Chara,
As your church has set aside a nursing room it seems that if you must nurse during church time that you should avail yourself of the nursing room. If the other women have turned off the sound it seems simple enouigh to go over and say” Oh I was hoping to listen to the priest” and turn the sound back on. They really can not object too much as clearly the reason they are officially there is church not gossip.
It is distracting to others when someone is nursing in public and although legal to nurse wherever and whenever you wish it is not gracious to perform any bodily fuctions that involve liquids coming out of your body in public.One of the difficulties of the valid choice to nurse is to have to find some privacy every time you need to feed the kid.
Chara,
I completely disagree with Alicia. There is nothing gross or unseemly about you feeding your child, and if you followed her advice you’d be a hermit and social outcast. I’m surprised anyone at church even notices, as nursing is almost silent and, with the help of a strategically placed thin blanket or scarf, completely discrete. Do not allow yourself to be chased out of the assembly hall. Perhaps you could make friends and allies out of the other nursing moms. If they too feel as you do about the nursing room, it could help to have some other nursing mothers who stay to worship – and nurse – with the rest of the congregation. Even if you’re unable to form this informal coalition, perhaps you could simply explain your decision this way: “I too would prefer to nurse in private, but it’s a small sacrifice to make so that we’re able to stay here in the presence of god.” Or, more snappily, “Well, I’d rather stay here and hope that others keep their eyes to themselves…”
Best of luck. Worst case scenario, find another church where people value the work you’re doing as a mother.
There is a reason that most churches provide various rooms for just this issue.
Nursing a baby in church during service is not appropriate at all. That is why they built a special nursing room for the mothers and the babies. The church I attend also has a soundproof room for people that have crying children or ones that can’t sit still. Children can be extremely disruptive and distracting to others. Our Priest has actually stopped the service before and gentley reminded the congregation who have the babies about the fact that the rooms are there for a reason……please use them. There are people out there that just don’t think your child is as wonderful as you do.
I agree that any sort of disrobing during a church service is not okay. I think too, that you know when your baby eats, perhaps on Sundays you can feed the baby before or after the service instead of during, most services only last an hour anyway.
It is absolutely shameful for ostensibly christian people to expect a mother providing her child with the sustenance God has provided to remove themselves from the congregation. There is nothing ‘irreverent’ about it. If you are offended by a woman nursing her child, you’re wound too damn tight, and no amount of time spent in church can save you from your sin of judging others.
I think that speaking up about the nursing room should be undertaken in any case, for the benefit of those who choose to use it.
I also think that people doling out snide remarks or looks in church (of all places!) have missed the entire point of going to church in the first place.
I also think that monitoring the clothing of one’s fellow congregants suggests an unseemly lack of focus.
Therefore, a nursing mother who is discreet and covered seems to be least of this congregation’s problems.
The majority does have the right to set standards and should not be subjected to random nip slips. But it seems that’s not what is going on here. What seems to be the problem is prudery and small-mindedness.
Elizabeth, it isn’t selfish to nurse a baby, and that isn’t what I said. It is selfish to not consider the feelings of others in a group; why must an established group, with customs that already accommodate the minority, change them?
I have been a nursing mother, and I understand the maternal feelings associated with this. I agree with your factual analysis of the activity, and if we are really exacting, it boils down to a bodily function in a sacred place of worship. I would not change a diaper in a church sanctuary; why would I feed an infant there? As an older woman now, I also came to realize that though new parents often like to think their own particular babies and new parenthood are unique in the history of mankind, they are not. Women have had babies and nursed them in a variety of circumstances, in a variety of accepted ways throughout milllinea. In this era, it is commonly expected that this activity should be conducted elsewhere other than in a church sanctuary. This does not make those who agree with this practice insensitive to the wonders of new life or somehow unsupportive of the parent. I think to declare it is, is indicative of a larger mindset increasingly common in our society; “If I want to do something, regardless of everyone else, and don’t back down, I’ll eventually get my way.”
If everyone could truthfully be polled in a church, I have no doubt the vast, vast majority would wish that young parents leave infants in the nursery; that is what they are there for, that is why they are staffed with loving, capable volunteers or professionals, and it is for this type of instance that breast pumps are made. This does not mean babies are not important to that church community, but rationally recognizes that, like spiritual progression, some members are infants requiring special accommodation, and some are mature persons ready to fully engage in structured worship.
I have appreciated the opportunity of discussing this issue with you.
I am not trying to be contrary, but I fundamentally disagree with three of your assumptions.
First, I do not believe that nursing is a ‘bodily function’ that is similar to using a toilet or changing a baby’s diaper. There are bacteria and smell issues around toileting, not to mention the exposure of genitals. Breastfeeding is eating. And it is the one kind of eating that can take place underneath a scarf or blanket. It does not smell, it does not involve bacteria of the digestive tract, and it does not involve the exposure of parts below the waist. What it does involve is the potential for a brief exposure of part of a breast, and as mothers become more experienced, that likelihood is reduced even further.
Second, I don’t understand why a church sanctuary should differ from the many other places where women are permitted to breastfeed, such as a restaurant, a park, a library, etc. It seems as though every week I see a news item where a nursing mother has (erroneously and illegally) been asked to leave a public place because she was nursing. What is it about a church sanctuary that demands such exception?
Third, I do not agree that when someone sees something wrong with culture or society and works to change it, that they are ‘imposing their views on the majority.’ The majority can be wrong – I refer you to Nazi Germany for a hyperbolic example, or slavery for another. A nursing mother is not trying to assert her special ‘unique snowflake’ individuality on the congregation. She’s trying to maintain her religious connection with her higher power while also tending to her earthly duties. What kind of focus on the service can those people have who are sitting around smirking and tut-tut-in at a new nursing mother??
Remember, I suggested that the original poster do what she could within reason to shift policies toward the ‘family-friendly’. It’s not that they ‘must’ change their customs, but that they can – it’s a possibility, and one that should be explored. If she can’t resolve it positively, obviously she’ll have to either live with the hot stinky room they’ve set aside, or find a new spiritual home. I’m sorry to belabor the point, but I simply don’t understand what is so unseemly or inappropriate about nursing? It seems to me that those who are titillated by it or those who can’t handle glimpsing a breast are the ones with the problem.
Any amount of disrobing, for whatever purpose (with the exception of a coat or outer garment), in a church sanctuary, is inappropriate, and is justifiably offensive to the devout worshiper. If one does not understand why a church sanctuary is different from other places, nothing anyone can say can help one comprehend why it is. As for comparing the opinion that nursing in one is inappropriate, with that of condoning Nazism or slavery, it is this type of inflated, (and to many survivors of those atrocities, more than likely highly offensive) hyperbolic example that discourages reasoned discussion. Lastly, churches ARE family friendly in providing locations for mothers to nurse (not to mention nurseries you totally dismiss by not acknowledging their viability as a solution to this issue), while preserving the worship experience for other members who do not wish to glimpse anyone’s breast in church. This does not make these individuals ignorant, sexually repressed or mean individuals, but instead demonstrates a cultured (and reverent) propriety that is one of the last bastions keeping the whole lot of us from sliding into the cesspool of base contemporary culture.