The recent outrage directed towards the photograph of a breastfeeding woman on the cover of Malayalam women’s magazine Grihalakshmi needs to be targeted elsewhere. The image accompanied by the headline, “Mothers tell Kerala, ‘Please don’t stare, we need to breastfeed’,” is part of the magazine’s ‘breastfeed freely’ campaign to mark International Women’s Day. The cover story questions the taboos associated with breastfeeding in public, but in the furore surrounding the merits-demerits of the staged breastfeeding photograph that is precisely what has received the least attention.
Perhaps it’s time we asked mothers about their experiences of public space: that mother who was forced to breastfeed her nine-month-old in a musty store room of a fancy shop. The woman who was politely but firmly told to stop breastfeeding in a swanky eatery as it was considered “inappropriate behaviour”. Those mothers who are obliged to breastfeed in toilets and parking lots or crouched hidden in corners of park benches. This experience is not just of breastfeeding but also when changing diapers — in dirty railway toilets, moving vehicles and on the floors of trial rooms — and taking young children to the restroom.
Most places in India rarely respect and provide for the reproductive — the menstruating, pregnant, lactating and child-caring — woman in public space. Mothers toting infants and young children are regularly treated as outsiders to the city’s public spaces which often lack even the most basic childcare amenities — mainly a place to breastfeed, a clean spot to change a baby’s soiled nappy, toilet seats sized for a child’s bottom or wash basins located at a lower height. This not only makes public space an unpleasant experience for women with children, but also restricts their use of public space, thus infringing on their rights as full participatory citizens.
In a survey conducted amongst more than 3,500 women last year by SHEROES India, Babygogo and Medela, to assess comfort levels of mothers breastfeeding in public, more than 66% of new mothers reported feeling uncomfortable breastfeeding their babies in public spaces. While 24% had faced rude remarks (including the horrendous “Give us some too”) and “invasive staring” while attempting to breastfeed, many others cited a lack of safe and clean public facilities and seating in public places as the reason for breastfeeding discomfort. As a result, many mothers either chose not to go out too often in public with their babies in the first year or to not breastfeed them, sometimes choosing bottle-feeding, in public.
There has been some improvement in the provision of infrastructure, notably breastfeeding rooms, at some airports, railway stations and bus terminuses. A model has been the separate rooms provided for lactating women in 352 bus terminals across Tamil Nadu by the Jayalalithaa government in 2015. Of course, these need to be constantly monitored — as a news report from Rajasthan revealed how the Ajmer railway station breastfeeding room was taken over within a month of its inauguration by men to rest or sleep with the railway police force looking the other way.
The absence or minimal presence of amenities for women and infants in public space is not merely a design flaw, nor is it a simple lack of attention to the rising numbers of women, many of whom are mothers, commuting and working outside the home. Instead it indicates a mindset that attaches ‘shame’ to a woman’s body, preferring to hide her reproductive body in the private realm. In fact, nowhere is the private-public divide more noticeable than in the image of the breastfeeding mother. One needs to highlight that the discomfort with breastfeeding in public is clearly nuanced by class — it is the middle-class/elite women who face more censure than poor working-class women.
It’s time all mothers asserted their rights as citizens, and cities and administrations responded with less disapproval and more thoughtfulness and care.
The writer is a Mumbai-based journalist, researcher and co-author, Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets