Food or lewd? Breast-feeding reveals divide

Julie Wheelan was confronted by a Rhode Island shopping mall security guard.

A restaurant assistant manager in Las Vegas criticized Emilee Holt.

And a lifeguard at a public pool in Washington state ordered Laurie Waldherr away from the water.

Their offense? Breast-feeding in public.

It seems that no matter how many protests breast-feeding moms stage in support of their rights, there’s always another confrontation right around the corner.

Even though health authorities have said for decades that breast is best for baby, American attitudes about nursing are still heatedly divided. In some cases, women who don't or can't breast-feed are made to feel like they're bad mothers. And those who do breast-feed — and nurse in public — can be the targets of complaints and outrage. Men often don't know what to do in the presence of a nursing mom and other women can be most critical of all.

Why are we so conflicted?

“Our society still doesn’t recognize the functional use of breasts,” says Karen Peters, executive director of the Breast Feeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles. “It only recognizes the sexual aspect.”

In a 2003 national survey for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 48 percent of 3,976 respondents said they were comfortable with moms nursing in public; 30 percent weren’t. The rest were undecided.

“Our society can’t accept that the human body isn’t always a sexual thing,” says Wheelan. Adds Sher Maloney, a California mother of two who started the Web site www.nurseherenow.com to support nursing in public: “A cultural taboo is actually affecting decisions about children’s health.”

When nursing moms feel shame or embarrassment, she says, they’ll be less likely to breast-feed in public. That’s the kind of feeling that sent Cynthia Thompson fleeing to a restaurant restroom stall the first time she had to nurse in public.

“I was really tense about it,” says the Pennsylvania mother of a 4-month-old. “I was just scared how other people would react.”

Going too far?
While lactivists — the name breast-feeding activists have come up with for themselves — defend their right to nurse publicly, others say the pro-nursing argument can sometimes go too far, making mothers who can’t or don’t want to nurse feel guilty. Breast-feeding should be sold on its benefits, they say.

They argue that mothers won’t respond to negative messages like the television ad in one federal government-funded campaign that showed a pregnant woman riding a mechanical bull. “You wouldn’t take risks before your baby’s born. Why start after?” the announcer asked. The conclusion: failure to breast-feed puts babies in danger.

Alicia Feldman, an Iowa mother, breast-fed all three of her children — including her twins. But she believes women need to be supportive of each other, regardless of how they feed their children.

"I have friends who have been successful at breast-feeding, and some who haven't," she says. "You don't judge each other. Sometimes your body won't keep up."

Breasts on a plane
Some confrontations make headlines — like the one that occurred on a Freedom Airlines flight in October.

Emily Gillette, a 27-year-old mom, said she was asked to leave a Vermont flight after she refused to cover up while breast-feeding her 22-month-old. News of that event spurred public “nurse-ins” at airports around the country, and Gillette filed a complaint with the Vermont Human Rights Commission.

But nursing mothers say confrontations are going on behind the headlines, too. And they’re fighting back.

Wheelan recalls the June day in 2006 at a Providence, R.I., shopping mall when she sat down to nurse her 4-month-old son: “I was in the food court. I wear nursing tanks. I try to be discreet. I don’t need people to see my business. I had a security guard come up to me and say, ‘People are uncomfortable with you. I’m going to have to ask you to go into the bathroom.’”

She stood her ground and suggested the guard call the state police to find out that the law protects her. In fact, a Rhode Island state law passed in 1998 excludes breast-feeding mothers from the state’s disorderly conduct laws, which cover indecent exposure.

Wheelan says she ordinarily doesn’t look for confrontation. “But when people choose to interject themselves, they make it an issue,” she says. “It’s part of what spurred me to get in on a nurse-in.”

A month later, she was back at the same mall, participating in a nationwide nursing protest at Victoria’s Secret. The lingerie retailer was targeted by lactivists after two women — one in Wisconsin and one in Massachusetts — said they were denied the right to nurse openly in the stores. The company issued an apology, and said its policy is to allow women to nurse in Victoria’s Secret stores.

During the Providence nurse-in, Whelan says, “I sat right in the window ... next to a mannequin wearing a thong and a push-up bra.”

'It's offensive'

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Not everyone who objects to public breast-feeding wants a confrontation.

Caroline Norris of Federal Way, Wash., believes nursing should be a personal thing between mother and baby.

"Nursing mothers need to go somewhere in private to nurse their babies and not sit and flaunt their breasts in public," she says. "It's offensive. I don't think women should be exposed out there in public."

Still, when she sees a baby nursing, she usually doesn't say anything. Instead, she just turns and walks away.

Others don't go so quietly. On the ABC talk show, "The View," Barbara Walters told how uncomfortable she felt sitting near a woman on an airplane flight who was breast-feeding her child. Within minutes, lactivist were online organizing nurse-ins around the country.

Even some new mothers have heated objections. When "Baby Talk" magazine, which bears the slogan "Straight talk for new moms," published a photo of a breast-feeding baby on the cover of its August 2006 issue, a flood of readers objected. In a poll of their readers, a quarter called the photo inappropriate.

An   MSNBC.com message board asking readers to weigh in on the incident drew thousands of posts on both sides of the issue. " When did we become a society that lets women think our own body parts are gross?," asked one reader.

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