IT’S TIME TO CRY OVER SPILLED MILK
Corporate lactation policies hurt working mothers, and break the law
The cyclical hum of a mother’s breast pump becomes the metronome of parenthood. The delicate ping of milk dribbling into a tube marked down to the milliliter is an audible reminder of the awesome motherly duty to sustain life.
Every drop of milk is valued not only in ounces, but as a measure of dedication. In this sobering symphony, the mind turns to mantras: On an honest day, “This is awful, this is awful” or in a meditation to push through the layered demands on a working mother, “I love my kids, I love my kids.”
New mothers are thrust into a period of complicated physical healing and mental overload, exacerbated by sleeplessness and household administration, all with a felt obligation to maintain their own optimum condition and positivity.
This is amplified for working mothers. The added pressure of providing enough food for a tiny human is dismaying, and sometimes demoralizing. Employers with unsupportive breastfeeding policies — or, worse, with no policy at all — turn this life-sustaining practice into a demeaning hurdle.
Disparate accommodations
According to the U.S. Office on Women’s Health, 60% of new mothers are in the workforce. The CDC’s National Immunization Surveys in 2015 and 2020 showed moms initiate breastfeeding at birth for 83% of newborns, but only 25% of infants are exclusively breastfed at six months. The CDC cites “unsupportive work policies’’ as a key factor in this attrition.
Nursing a newborn is a full-time practice. When moms are away from their babies for an extended period, they must pump both to provide milk for the coming days, and to avoid the pain of engorgement.
But the comfort of expressing milk in the workplace often comes down to class and title. Financially secure families where mothers hold prominent positions are more likely to breastfeed long-term. Their workplace pumping environment typically has encouraging management,private spaces, fewer time restrictions and easy access to supplies and sanitation.
However, the majority of working moms are in lower-wage jobs in the service sector. They have the greatest need for support but are forced to endure disparate treatment in workplace pumping conditions. Employers know that for these mothers working and pumping are both essential. They also know that because they have fewer options, they’re likely to accept whatever they’re offered out of fear of losing that job.
Ignoring the law
A Pittsburgh mom was employed as a barista with the largest restaurant company in the world when she gave birth to her daughter. Starbucks provided the nursing mother a single-person tent pitched in the store’s backroom. Her “private space” was surrounded by the manager’s desk, employees on break, pastry racks and dishes.
Starbucks’ tent included a chair, but nothing for this mom to set her supplies on, so she reached out to
her community’s local “Buy Nothing” group in search of a small side table. When we connected, she told me her pump is powered by a cable routed under the tent’s flap. There is no internal light or temperature control. It’s dark and hot.
The building was constructed in the last few years and included consumerdriven services like a drive-thru, but no space was planned to support mothers who express breastmilk.
“Sometimes they gave me separate breaks to pump, but usually pumping time would count as my break. Sometimes they’d extend my lunch to be 40 minutes instead of 30 if I asked for more time to pump. One time they handed me the iPad while I was in the middle of pumping to clock out for my lunch. They also almost always said, ‘Can you wait?’, or got upset when I asked about going for my pump break, like I was inconveniencingthem,” she said.
This mom later started a new job at a Pittsburgh location of a daycare facility chain. She found the pumping environment even worse: Despite being dedicated to nurturing young children, management told her to express milk in the open break lounge or the bathroom.
These chains’ lactation spaces aren’t meeting current Department of
Labor or the Fair Labor Standards Acts mandates, and they violate the federal PUMP Act. While temporary mobile options are legal and used in outdoor settings, glaring violations occur regularly — including failing to provide a flat surface for supplies, as required by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The major problem, though, is no one except pumping mothers seems to mind.
Good business
At the same time, the service industry is at the forefront of a labor shortage that peaked during COVID and was fueled by the exit of mothers from the workforce. The US Census Bureau states that mothers make up 32% of all employed women, but despite recent policy advances, barriers to mothers’ workforce participation remain. And it’s hurting the economic security of millions of American families.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act prohibits lactation discrimination, but outside of the most basic guidelines, there is little oversight or enforcement. It’s ultimately left up to employers to determine their own level of accommodation and to deem what is or isn’t acceptable staff conduct toward breastfeeding mothers. This world of ad hoc breastfeeding ‘best practices’ is failing our future.
Starbucks has no company-wide breastfeeding policy, and they declined my request for corporate comment. The coffee conglomerate first shifted me between departments before finally insisting I instead speak with individualstore managers for their policy.
Considering the high rate of turnover in the service industry, and the fact that employee retention is cost-effective, it is surprising that companies like Starbucks don’t provide more family resources. At the same time, corporate culture in America habitually ignores the outside-of-work lives and needs of workers, especially parents. And especially mothers.
Offering well-equipped, comfortable, private lactation areas to all working mothers, regardless of their career track, is the law. But if companies don’t care about that, they should also realize it will help them attract and retain talented employees.
A labor future that includes new mothers means honoring them as mothers — including supporting their role in sustaining their children. Listen closely: Millions of breast pumps are humming together, “We can do this, we can do this.”