A breast milk courier service is proof we have a long way to go

Of the hundreds of crazy workingmother stories I received after the publication of I Don’t Know How She Does It, one from a books editor sticks in the mind. Back at work a few weeks after giving birth, Deborah had to take Norman Mailer out to lunch. Escorting the famously pugilistic author (he stabbed his wife twice with a penknife) would have been daunting at any time, but Deborah was still breastfeeding. Over the main course, Deborah felt a familiar warm tingling, dashed from the table, found a broom cupboard, locked herself in and started to express milk with her mini-pump. “I got back to the table and I don’t think Norman noticed I was gone.”

Deborah turned that humiliation into a joke, but I read it as tragicomedy. A new mother is a mammal, her body primed to nurture her baby. You can put that mammal into a business suit, and send it back to work too soon, but Mother Nature will out.

I thought of Deborah when I read about Goldman Sachs offering to pay to courier new mothers’ breast milk home from anywhere in the world while they are away on business. The investment bank told staff it was a sign of its “commitment to working parents”. Hmmm. Certainly, it’s a step forward for the Goldman Sachs that was once notorious for giving two weeks’ maternity leave and four hours off for a bereavement. Grieve-n-go!

In the 16 years since my novel about a stressed-out working mum was published, firms have felt the need to become more family friendly to retain talented female staff. Back then, a fund-manager friend expressed milk for her daughter, stored it in the office fridge and found out, only just in time, that a male colleague thought it was funny to spike it with vodka.

But the breast-milk delivery scheme is evidence of how far we still have to go. Why should mothers fight biology to fit into work when it’s work that needs to change to accommodate mothers? We will know that real progress has been achieved at Goldman Sachs when breast milk is given by new mother to baby. In person, not two continents away.