Delta Airlines and the Nursing Mom - Update
Posted on November 24th, 2006 – 10:39 AMBy May Chen
Cribsheet heard about the national nurse-in too late to rush over and participate (dang!). But Strib reporter Sue Peterson was at Minneapolis-St.Paul Airport Tuesday morning for the protest against Delta Airlines, which had ejected a nursing mother from a commuter flight. Her truncated observations ran in a national story in the paper Wednesday. Here’s what ended up on the Strib’s equivalent of the cutting room floor:
It wasn’t a total bust, but only a small contingent of nursing moms turned up.
Andrea Marrapodi of Minneapolis was there with daughter Zora, 18 months, She called Delta’s 800 number Monday and was told the ariline’s policy is to allow breast-feeding “as long as they’re being discreet and they cover the baby with a blanket.
That’s not acceptable, Marrapodi and two other protesting moms said Tuesday, camped out on a bank of seats in front of the Delta ticket counter.
“We’re not expected to eat with a blanket over our heads,” and babies shouldn’t either, said Barbara Morgan, mother of 12-week-old Maya, who was nursing inside a sling baby carrier. “Breast-feeding is not supported and encouraged enough, given the benefits to babies and mothers….(This) is just one more reason for families to be discouraged from breast-feeding their babies.”
Rebecca Aylesforth of Minneapolis said a blanket isn’t practical. “She whips it off,” said Aylesforth, mother of 9-month-old Sophia Paulson. a wiggly, giggly charmer. “That just calls more attention to us.”
Aylesforth and Morgan said they’d no trouble nursing on Northwest and other airlines’ flights. Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch said: “We rely on our customers to use their good judgement and be respectful and sensitive to their fellow passengers.”
Susan E. Peterson (612) 673-4506
11 Responses to "Delta Airlines and the Nursing Mom - Update"
Perhaps they should pray in arabic while breastfeeding on the plane, all while refusing to say the pledge of allegiance? Seriously, why is being “discreet” such an imposition? It sounds pretty much identical to Northwest’s approach. I’m at the point of saying that everyone ought to just mellow out a bit, and recognize that in a communal environment (especially very tight quarters), making a huge point out of one’s “rights” can make life less, rather than more, pleasant.
I must say, I agree with Alec. Believe me, I have NOTHING against nursing moms (I was one and will be again in a few months)…but I was never all that comfortable doing it in public, nor watching others do so. In the original situation that started this post, the woman REFUSED to take a blanket, and that seems a little unreasonable to me.
As for the comments from the women quoted in THIS particular post, that breast-feeding is not supported and encouraged enough, I feel the exact opposite. The societal pendulum has currently swung so far in favor of nursing that mothers who prefer NOT to nurse, for whatever reason, are judged and made to feel guilty.
There are many ways to be a “good mother.” Nursing is one of them, but supplying your baby with healthy, age-appropriate nourishment that doesn’t come from you is another one. Either way, unconditional love and affection are more important than what kind of food they eat.
Adults don’t have to eat with blankets over their heads, why should babies? Breastfeeding is normal and natural. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, don’t look. Blankets generally make it more obvious that you are breastfeeding since most people don’t cover themselves up with blankets in public. I’m not sure how nursing a baby in a window seat in the second to last aisle in a plane is not discreet.
I think the whole problem with this is for SO many years, pretty much the entire length of human existance breasts were made to be something sexual, when their real function is for feeding. If it weren’t for this fact, any woman could walk around shirtless if she liked as men do, and any woman could nurse, either discreetly or otherwise in any public situation without it being a big deal. My mind keeps going back to the “uncivilized” cultures where you see women topless and breast feeding, anywhere, anytime, in any situation and it’s regarded as natural. Perhaps we could take a lesson from these cultures that seem so backwards to us, and see breasts for what they are, not what they have been turned into.
Oh, and the next time I see a man with a handsome face eating near me, I will ask him to cover it up with a blanket.
I visited family in Malaysia recently and nursed in a park. A Muslim woman on a bench nearby was doing the same. She wore a headscarf, but nonchalantly lifted her shirt and fed the baby in public. Such a heartwarming sight.
Wow, Alec, you would love to fly with me. I pray (in Arabic, even!) and nurse my baby without a blanket. And guess what? Everybody lived!
Emily Gilette was nursing her baby in the last row, window seat. I don’t think you can get much more discreet than that. Perhaps she should have sat on the wing?
Why is it an imposition? Because sometimes babies (esp older babies) make it impossible to be discreet! They babble and pull off the breast to look around. They certainly don’t tolerate anything over their faces. And I don’t think refusing the offer of a blanket is excessive. Airline blankets are notoriously filthy.
My wife and I were on a Delta flight just two months before this incident occurred and had a similar situation arise. She was breastfeeding our daughter, discreetly, near the rear of the plane, not a crowded flight. A flight attendant passed by and asked me if she might like a blanket, I happily said yes because my wife needed something to help prop her arm up to keep it from falling asleep under the weight of our child.
It was only after I took the blanket that the flight attendant said “Just because some people are a little uncomfortable.”
Looking back now, particularly in light of recent events, there are no decent words to describe how mad that makes me. There was no other passenger with a view of my wife and she was being entirely discreet anyway. Clearly nobody complained. What on earth is wrong with Delta that they require people to cover up with a blanket (the shirt covering the breast entirely apparently wasn’t enough) when there is nobody around to see anything? Did the (female) flight attendant have a personal issue?
Furthermore, the best thing you can do to keep a tired and bored child from screaming and upsetting the whole flight is to stick a nipple in the kid’s mouth. If you ask a hundred people on a four hour flight if they prefer a mother they can’t even see breastfeeding or the sounds of a temper tantrum in a confined space, I have a feeling the mother will win every time.
When something is beneficial to the health of both child and mother, promotes tranquility during a long flight, is entirely normal everywhere in the world but the most conservative parts of the U.S., there is no justification for any airline restrictions. The assertion that a woman’s natural motherly behavior is somehow obscene is deeply offensive.
How can anyone expect parents not to be angry about this? In our case, my wife promptly rolled up the blanket and ignored the flight attendant.
Little did we know that we might have been kicked off the plane if we had been on the ground. I can tell you that I would have happily spent a fortune suing the airline, and I have a feeling organizations like La Leche League and the ACLU would back us up when the money ran out.
I don’t mean to snub anyone personally, but if people have hang-ups about breastfeeding, that is not the mother’s problem. When an airline, or anyone else, suggests that my wife is doing something obscene by feeding our daughter in the healthiest way possible, they are protecting a minority of people from minor discomfort at a much greater expense to society.
- Rob
If nursing in public makes people uncomfortable because they consider breasts to be sexual, then I guess bottle-feeding must be the equivalent of whipping out a dildo, huh? Breasts, not just for men anymore!
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