The Washington Post has reported on a controversy at American University involving Professor Adrienne Pine who drew complaints from her students in her class “Sex, Gender & Culture” after she breastfed her baby in class. The university has criticized Pine but the controversy has produced a national debate on the propriety of a professor bringing a baby to class and breastfeeding in front of students as she lectures.
In defense of Pine, this was the first class and the baby was sick. She did not want to cancel class and did not have child care options.
Pine allowed the baby to crawl on the floor in the class and was observed removing a paper clip that she found on the floor from her mouth. The baby also had to be shooed away from an electrical socket. She then breastfed the baby in front of the students.
When students complained and the student newspaper sent a reporter, Pine reportedly was angry and described the query and tone as “anti-women.” She proceeded to go public with an online essay titled “The Dialectics of Breastfeeding on Campus: Exposéing my Breasts on the Internet.” Ironically, in publishing the essay, Pine insisted that she was “shocked and annoyed that this would be considered newsworthy.” She said that she considered even the inquiry about the incident to have created “a hostile environment.” Pine insisted that these objections from students missed the point of a feminist class:
In her essay, on counterpunch.org, Pine summed up her view: “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.”
The university criticized Pine for not taking leave in such a situation to take care of a sick child or arrange for child care. It further criticized the online essay as unprofessional.
I have often allowed students to bring their kids to class when they find themselves in a bind. (I actually enjoy having the kids in class). I tend to agree with the university over the need to take a leave on such a day rather than bring a sick child to class. I am particularly concerned with the response of Pine to the student journalists and the suggestion that such inquiries constitute a “hostile workplace” and “anti-woman” attitude. Not only are these journalists looking into a campus controversy but they are exploring objections from students. Colleges are places for such debates and, as indicated by the response of the university, there are legitimate questions raised by the controversy.
The EEOC defines a hostile work place as
“A hostile work environment is created when an employee is continually harassed, and has documented employment decisions that are biased according to race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or socio-economic class.”
As general as that definition may be, it clearly does not encompass a campus controversy over a professor bringing a sick baby to class.
What do you think?
Pine is an anthropology associate professor whose academic bio describes her as “a militant medical anthropologist who . . . has worked both outside and inside the academy to effect a more just world.”
Source: Washington Post
In my academic days, I had a colleague who regularly brought her child into the office, but she never took him to class and certainly never breast fed him there. Her treatment of the child sounds like neglect–crawling on the floor, exposure of a probably immune compromised child to other people’s illnesses, not to mention exposing them to the child’s. This sounds like a pretty thoughtless parent and the response to criticism sounds very thinskinned and childish.
Did she perhaps check and see what the school’s (her EMPLOYER by the way) policy would be in a situation like that? Did she consult a superior?
The child should have been home, and as someone above said, she can pump.
It was neither the time nor the place. The students pay for their professors to be paying attention to THEM not babysitting! I find this extremely obnoxious, myself.
And the students! We’re not talking that maybe a couple felt uncomfortable (but so what right)? We’re talking that they actually made complaints, which makes it sound like there were many of them not liking it. But it’s a college, so why listen to students, right?
This is just wrong on SO many levels!
Darren, You’re not only racist, you’re sexist. Say something adverse to old people and you win the triple crown! Wink, wink.
There’s significant data that shows having all this antibacterial/sterile enviroment for kids makes them more vulnerable. Our bodies are incredible @ building up immunities and antibodies, particularly in children, but they can’t when everything is so sterile. Grandma was right…let them get dirty.
Interesting bio (from the link supplied by Jonathan Turely:
Adrienne Pine
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
Adrienne Pine is a militant medical anthropologist who has worked in Honduras, Mexico, Korea, the United States, and Egypt. In her book, Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras, she argues that the symbolic violence resulting from Hondurans’ embodied obsession with certain forms of ‘real’ violence is a necessary condition for the acceptance of violent forms of modernity and capitalism. Dr. Pine has worked both outside and inside the academy to effect a more just world. Prior to and following the June 2009 military coup in Honduras, she has collaborated with numerous organizations and individuals to bring international attention to the Honduran struggle to halt the state violence (in its multiple forms). She has also conducted extensive research on the impact of corporate health-care and health-care technologies on labor practices in the U.S.
Degrees
PhD, Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
MA, Demography, University of California, Berkeley
MA, Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
BA, Anthropology, Brown University
Languages Spoken:
Spanish (fluent), Korean (proficient), Arabic, French, Nahuatl (conversational)
Her claims will lead to real claims of harassment and hostile workplace to go unredressed.
Let’s take the breast feeding issue aside and instead substitue feeding a 7 year old lunch in the ordinary way.
Students do not pay tuition (which is in essence consideration of a contract for eduction) to pay for teachers to feed sandwiches to their children. They pay for the institution to provide them an education. I am sure her employment contract does not include provisions that allow for the feeding of her children, washing clothes or whatever non job related chores she chooses to partake in.
So, how would it be any different because she chose to breast feed this baby? She is still not fully performing her job expectations.
I have to agree with some of the commenters, she was doing this to make a statement. Maybe she sould instead focus on her job instead of grandstanding her opinion when her job is actually that of education of the students.
Elaine,
She’s going to make worse mistakes than this. I’m just not into beating up on young mothers who are also trying to support their families in the work place. The baby is fine.
I’m a woman and I oppose pressure on women that treats brestfeeding as something abhorrent. However students pay for their professor’s time and attention. She has an obligation there that I don’t think is being fully respected by bringing a young child to class, especially an ill one who would understandably require even more attention than a healthy infant.
It sounds like she was having difficulty giving the infant proper supervision in an environment that is reasonably not “baby safe” while she was lecturing and was indeed a distraction for her and students in class. That seems to me far more the real issue than her brestfeeding in front of students.
Students have limited access to their professors and that needs to be a priority for the professor. I understand the demands of a young child which is why I support maternity leave and sick days for parents to use to care for young children who are sick. But I don’t think just because a professor is a parent of a young child that they can neglect their obligations to their students by using classtime to care for that child.
Blouise,
I would never take a baby with a fever to work…never let my baby crawl around the floor of my classroom. I think this professor lacks common sense.
The baby had a fever and was brought to school? The sick child was allowed to crawl around on a dirty floor in a classroom that hadn’t been child-proofed? This mother could have pumped her breasts so she didn’t have to breastfeed during her class and asked her assistant to feed her baby while she taught.
Who normally cares for this professor’s child when she is at work?
It’s inappropriate for children to be brought into the workplace at whatever age unless a specific reason exists, imho. Given that it was the first day of class and the baby was sick I think the employer should have made some accommodation to the professor like having a substitute appear or rescheduling the class or allowing an online presentation. That said, the prickly response by the professor to the objection seems unreasonable as well. A classroom is a workplace and should be treated as such. The students have every right to expect the undivided attention of the professor and the distraction of her unsupervised child is certainly beyond the pale. The breast feeding issue is fraught with problems and could have easily been avoided in the first instance.
Guilt, guilt, guilt … the thing any normal, healthy mother feels constantly even when there is nothing to feel guilty about.
Professor Pine, you did your best in a difficult situation and your baby is fine. Trust me, there are always going to be those out there questioning or criticizing your skills as a mother. Trust your own intuition and accept the fact that guilt will always be riding in your back pocket. That’s part and parcel of motherhood.
I have no problem with the professor bringing the child to school with her, but the kids do not pay tuition to have an infant in the class while she is teaching. It is not hostile it is fundamental fairness. The students are entitled to her 100% attention during class and office hours and are paying good money for that time.
I also can’t see the news value in this. Also, the mother criticism is a bit much as a subject of news; if she DID successfully prevent both choking and electrocution, where’s the harm in observing that she “had to” do so? Why don’t these students grow up!
Gotta say, I’ve brought my kid to work for the same reasons. But I brought in a portable crib with toys for her to hang out and play. I don’t doubt her ability to breastfeed modestly, and applaud her lesson. But I’m not certain she’s got a case for hostile workplace as a result of this.
This is just a woman always looking for a confrontation. I have no doubt in my mind that she thought about what the reaction might be to her actions, and she relished the idea of the fight it would bring. A bunch of passive-aggressive attitude in this. The righteous indignation is classic.
I’m less worried about her right to a non-hostile workplace than I am for her child to have a safe place and proper supervision when it is too ill to go to childcare. Crawling around on a filthy campus floor and having access to light sockets while mom is teaching class? If it was a babe in arms( in a carrier, a small infant) and breastfed, I would have been on her side if there were objections given merely to its presence and the nursing, but this seems a safety and liability issue for the child and the university. If the kid is too sick for daycare, it is too sick for a university classroom!
Some people in the United States DO have absurd views on breastfeeding. I’ve heard absurd suggestions that mothers should feed their children in a bathroom, for instance.
People who recoil at a natural phenomenon need to spend some time out of the city.