Some women have got unobtrusive public breastfeeding down to a fine art.
On a sunny afternoon in a quiet Dublin public house in the 1990s one such woman was breastfeeding her baby.
Her discretion cut no ice with an irritated man whom I had been doing my best to ignore.
A veteran of World War Two, he had nothing good whatsoever to say about modern society which is why I had been trying to ignore him.
Observing this woman and her equally discreet baby his eyes narrowed and he declared that "I saw things in the war, begod, but I never saw the likes of that."
This confirmed my view that his role in the war had been extremely peripheral but it also confirmed that a woman breastfeeding is viewed by some as the equivalent of an unexploded bomb.
What is it that objectors think will happen? Do they fear that the woman will, indeed, explode, showering innocent bystanders with mother's milk?
When I addressed this subject in The Irish Times I got an e-mail from a man who had been hemmed in, as he saw it, on a bus journey by a woman who whipped out a baby and began to breastfeed it.
So intimidated was he by this shocking turn of events that he was afraid to ask the woman to move so he could leave his seat when the bus got to his destination. He stayed on beside her in a state of discombobulation until she got off at the next town. He did likewise and paid for a taxi to take him back to his original port of call.
It’s extraordinary that the simple act of breastfeeding in public can panic so many people - even today we hear of women being kicked off planes and out of cafés for daring to breastfeed.
It's almost funny (though not for the women involved) that after all our sexual, technological, social and other revolutions we can still be startled by by the sight of one of the most natural acts in the world.
What a very, very silly species we are.
Padraig O’Morain writes for The Irish Times, The Evening Herald and The Irish Medical News. His website is www.padraigomorain.com
On a sunny afternoon in a quiet Dublin public house in the 1990s one such woman was breastfeeding her baby.
Her discretion cut no ice with an irritated man whom I had been doing my best to ignore.
A veteran of World War Two, he had nothing good whatsoever to say about modern society which is why I had been trying to ignore him.
Observing this woman and her equally discreet baby his eyes narrowed and he declared that "I saw things in the war, begod, but I never saw the likes of that."
This confirmed my view that his role in the war had been extremely peripheral but it also confirmed that a woman breastfeeding is viewed by some as the equivalent of an unexploded bomb.
What is it that objectors think will happen? Do they fear that the woman will, indeed, explode, showering innocent bystanders with mother's milk?
When I addressed this subject in The Irish Times I got an e-mail from a man who had been hemmed in, as he saw it, on a bus journey by a woman who whipped out a baby and began to breastfeed it.
So intimidated was he by this shocking turn of events that he was afraid to ask the woman to move so he could leave his seat when the bus got to his destination. He stayed on beside her in a state of discombobulation until she got off at the next town. He did likewise and paid for a taxi to take him back to his original port of call.
It’s extraordinary that the simple act of breastfeeding in public can panic so many people - even today we hear of women being kicked off planes and out of cafés for daring to breastfeed.
It's almost funny (though not for the women involved) that after all our sexual, technological, social and other revolutions we can still be startled by by the sight of one of the most natural acts in the world.
What a very, very silly species we are.
Padraig O’Morain writes for The Irish Times, The Evening Herald and The Irish Medical News. His website is www.padraigomorain.com
3 comments:
I thought this was really funny, Padraig :)
Maybe you'll be heartened, though, by the experience of my godmother, who breastfed in the 70s and 80s - the only person who ever commented on her feeding was one time when she was on a train, and an elderly priest came by and told her how lovely it was to see someone feeding naturally. So, in fairness, it's not all bad :)
Hilarious anecdotes used to make your point very succinctly, Padraig. I love it!
I actually just wrote a blog post about my own experiences breastfeeding in public. I've found that other women tend to be the most upset by it. Or rather, they make the most noise about it.
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