One morning, American University anthropology professor Adrienne Pine found her baby daughter sick with a fever. Consequently, she was unable to leave the child at day care. It was the first day of the semester and Pine didn't want to miss class. So she brought the baby to class and, at one point during her lecture, she breastfed the child. Some students, including freshman Jake Carias, thought this was unprofessional conduct:
“I found it unprofessional,” he said. “I was kind of appalled.”
Carias fired off a tweet: “midway through class breast feeding time.” He also posted a message on his Facebook page. He said he later dropped the class.
Now, the Northwest Washington campus is abuzz.
At the Tavern, a dining room just off the central quad, Jenna Wasserman, 18, a freshman from New Jersey, said she has heard two opinions from students: that breast-feeding “is very much natural,” and that doing so in class is “kind of unprofessional.” Wasserman said she leans toward the latter view. “There were alternatives,” she said.
In a response published in Counterpunch, Dr. Pine wrote:
So here’s the story, internet: I fed my sick baby during feminist anthropology class without disrupting the lecture so as to not have to cancel the first day of class. I doubt anyone saw my nipple, because I’m pretty good at covering it. But if they did, they now know that I too, a university professor, like them, have nipples. Or at least that I have one.
It's not child care, but a job. Do the job, hire someone for childcare.
Considering the context of the class and her excuses I have to question whether the professor was actually making a personal statement with her conduct more than anything, but not knowing her I can't make that call.
Should she have brought a sick child to class? I say no, but it isn't deserving of this much attention.
But she should have called a break, gotten a friend with some formula, or just cancelled the damn class.
And bringing a sick baby in was not a great idea. Infants' immune systems are excruciatingly fragile,
and college students are all dirty, unwashed, syphilitic Commie-bastard Hipster mud-wrestlers with their 80's clothes and grammaw shorts; -so intersecting the two was not smart.
I had a professor in the late '90s who occasionally had to nurse her infant in class. It was really not a big deal and in no way disruptive. I wonder whether the people complaining how "unprofessional" this was have actually ever been in a room while a mom nursed her baby? In most cases, the act doesn't expose much, and it doesn't require the mom to divert her attention from other tasks.
A. It depends on which person she is breastfeeding, I suppose.
The issue is not breastfeeding. Breastfeeding in public is fine. It's about being fully on-task for the service her students paid for.
Any working mother should have a contingency plan for just such a situation. Most jobs would just say "no way" and that would be the end of it. What sitter wouldn't take a baby for one hour for a 20? Thus, we are left with the obvious conclusion: The professor was making a statement. I guess in her particular class, that might have been appropriate. It would have made a great subject of discussion during the following class. "How many of you were offended by my actions last class and why?"...
Inappropriate and unprofessional and clearly done only for the shock value. Saying "excuse me" and stepping into somewhere private would have only taken a few minutes. But instead, she chose to detract from learning, create controversy, and make her students feel uncomfortable just to make a point.