• Fri, Sep 14 - 12:32 pm ET

Professor Who Breastfed In Front Of Class Succinctly Clarifies There Was No ‘Ideal Option’

Adrienne Pine, the assistant professor who breastfed her sick baby one time during her first class of the year, has caused many reactions across the interwebs — many of them unsupportive. While her decision as a mother has prompted the predictable array of obnoxious parenting utopias, Adrienne did put her decision into a very appropriate context. One of which highlights well the parenting circumstances of many mothers, professional or otherwise.

Single mother Adrienne was interviewed on Good Morning America this morning elaborating on why she brought her sick baby to work. Upon awakening to discover that her child had a fever, Pine says:

“It wasn’t the ideal option and the fact is there was no ideal option. It was best of the options available to me.”

Preach.

Adrienne’s personal observation is echoed in Maria Guido‘s recent piece, reminding us that for the vast majority of parents who can’t afford babysitters, emergency nannies, pricey cribs and organic food, there are no choices. And believe me, had this professor called the 14-year-old babysitter around the corner to watch her feverish infant for the day while she prioritized “professionalism” and went to work, there would also be mommy penance to pay. Namely if the child became so ill that the caretaker called a doctor or took the baby to emergency room. In those circumstances, we’d all be clacking our tongues about that selfish, ambitious, cold mother who dared leave her baby just so she could be greedy and attend her first day of class so as to not to risk her tenure.

If anything, this cultural chiding accurately frames the completely unrealistic worlds we expect parents (but primarily mothers) to seamlessly navigate — and without the resources to successfully to do so. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. The best position many a mother can be in at present is to choose where she wants her lashings to come from, because they’ll definitely be coming from somewhere.

(photo: yahoo.com)

Share This Post:
Related Topics: Work Life Balance • • • •
  • Ipsedixit

    I call BS. You don’t mention the TA who was rocking the child while she was in the room and who offered to watch her. The professor turned her down. Since she normally has childcare, she has other options available besides breastfeeding (pumping, etc). She’s trying to backtrack after doing something unprofessional in front of 40 new students who would have had to leave the lesson they paid for if it made them uncomfortable.

    • Justme

      This has no relation to the article whatsoever….but I’m just curious about your screen name. I see you all over the boards here and I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “Ipsedixit” and where it stems from. Like I said….I’m just curious.

  • kay

    I say good on her. She was teaching a Sex, Gender and Culture class. This is a perfect example of that. This is life and these students are now adults and no longer need to be coddled from real world experiences. The baby needed to eat. It’s not like she took her top off and showed everyone her breasts.

    • DMH

      As a tuition paying student, I pay for my professors to teach, not babysit. As a mother, I know that infants can throw a fit at the drop of a hat. To have that in an environment where you’re there to learn is a huge distraction. If I were one of her students, I’d have left.

    • Kel

      Without knowing the nitty-gritty (did she use a cover, nipple/no nipple etc. etc.), it wouldn’t surprise me at all if a student called her on sexual harassment AND it wouldn’t surprise me if the accusation actually found traction, depending again on those details.

      The reason is because she wasn’t just breastfeeding in public on a park bench or among strangers on a bus. She was breastfeeding while leading class–a class her students are required to attend and expected to literally watch and listen exclusively to her. In other words, she essentially forced her students to watch her breastfeed. And while the act itself isn’t sexual in nature to her, breasts are still considered sexual organs and exposing them in class in any way is inappropriate. Plus, it doesn’t matter, under sexual harassment guidelines, if SHE finds exposing the breast to breastfeed a-ok; what matters is how her students felt about it and if it made THEM uncomfortable. As the authority figure in this scenario–someone who has great effect on the students’ grades and academic careers–she doesn’t get to decide what should and shouldn’t make her students uncomfortable.

      And I’m not a prude–believe me–I support a woman’s right to breastfeed in public and if I were in her class, I’d probably be like, “Whatever. Just a boob.” But in this case, I have to say that I can’t blame anyone else if they were made to be uncomfortable or distracted, given the circumstances.

  • DMH

    Who the hell brings their infant to work with them when they have a fever? Cancel the damn class for the day and take care of your kid. I guess even professors lack common sense.

  • K.

    This boggles my mind.

    I’m a college professor myself, with kids,
    and no, sorry, there are other options.
    She could have (and I have, when it’s come to matters of personal
    health) canceled her class. And no, one class cancellation will not
    affect your chances of getting tenure, even if it’s the first class
    (particularly if you say, had to take your sick child to the hospital
    and had documentation on it). If she’s a professor, then she also would
    have a TA, and if you are a responsible professor, then you prep your TA
    so that in the event of an emergency, they can lead class (or at least
    part of it) if you don’t want to cancel it. As lpsedixit said, she could
    have also
    asked her TA (or another graduate student, or even an undergraduate) to
    watch the kid for 2 hours.

    It doesn’t matter whether she teaches
    sex & gender, women’s studies, biology, or philosophy and it
    doesn’t matter whether she’s a university professor or a corporate
    accountant. It’s straight-up unprofessional to breastfeed a sick baby while you are teaching class! How would you feel if learned that your kid’s 2nd grade teacher brought her feverish baby to class and breastfed it while she was teaching addition?? Or if your dentist was breastfeeding while they were doing one of your fillings?

    And again, a college professor, single mother or not, is not the profile of someone with “no options.” Every single university that I have been employed with has mandatory healthcare. Being a college professor (and yes, I’m in the humanities) doesn’t generally translate to big money, but you are a white-collar professional and hopefully have your act together that you can, if needed, pay for a babysitter when you need one. I can believe that a slaughterhouse assembly line worker might be in a bind when their child is sick, but the suggestion that a college professor is so overworked and underpaid that they have “no options” when it comes to teaching class or taking care of their children is laughable.

    I’m all for revising the laws governing maternity leave and employment rights for mothers and I am very much in support of working mothers, but this story is NOT the right profile to represent the true needs of a working single mother. This–this is absurd.

  • Andrea

    Yeah, I am the VERY 1st to defend parental (notice the word PARENTAL as opposed to JUST moms) rights on the workplace, but this woman took the cake. There was a TA watching the child, she has other childcare options, she could have cancelled the class, etc. And even if the baby was sick, there was NO need to feed (notice I said feed it, it would have been just as inappropriate to give it a bottle or a jar of food as giving her the breast) this baby in front of a classroom full of people.

  • mslove17

    It’s not the fact that she breastfed that gets me. It’s that she felt it was okay and “professional” to take care of her child while performing her job. Her employer didn’t hire her to watch her child AND teach. They are paying her to teach.
    You don’t bring your sick child to work with you (and also risk infecting the entire class, who I’m sure doesn’t appreciate that). She should have stayed home and canceled her class for the day.

  • STFUParents

    I think her reaction is what bothered me the most. When she asked the reporter from the student paper not to use her name, it really threw me off. If she’s teaching a class about gender and feminism, wouldn’t she want to stand by her decision and even lend a proper quote (other than, “This isn’t newsworthy.”)? Or perhaps take it further and offer to host a gathering (in the classroom or outside, off campus, etc.) to discuss these issues and get feedback as well as encourage awareness of the issues working mothers face? Instead, she seemed to be very uncomfortable with the attention and with her decision, and she chose to go about dealing with the attention poorly. I’m glad the subject is getting some attention, but I agree with the people who say she should have cancelled the class and/or asked the TA to stand in. Students today are so over-burdened with loan debt, I would be annoyed if my teacher chose to bring her sick baby into our class time.

    • Justme

      Maybe she didn’t expect it to be such a big deal and isn’t accustomed to dealing with the mass amounts of media attention that she is currently receiving. That could account for some of her general awkwardness.

      Not being her advocate but if I were in a position like hers, I would be TOTALLY awkward and uncomfortable with all that media attention.

    • STFUParents

      Oh, I wasn’t referring to how she handled the media, just how she handled the student reporter who was writing for the student publication. That’s the type of thing any professor should anticipate, be it because she breastfed during class or just because she led a particularly controversial or newsworthy class one day. It sounds like she was very defensive, because she wasn’t entirely comfortable with her options or her decision, but I think it’s better to have an open dialogue than to shy away or be outwardly defensive. It’s better to have people disagree with you than call you out for trying to “cover up” or avoid what they consider to be a story. I sympathize with her position, but I don’t think I personally agree with her choices.

    • Tinyfaeri

      Would I truck my baby to a work lunch and breastfeed her in front of my boss, boss’s boss, and boss’s boss’s boss? No. Do I think anyone should? Not really. Do I think that it could seem like the only option available for a single mother who kind of needs to keep her job (however irrational the fear of losing it over one class may be), can’t send her baby to daycare, doesn’t have family nearby, doesn’t know any babysitters, doesn’t really know her TA (new year, new TA, not trained yet, blah blah blah), etc? Do I also think that the mother that chose to bring her baby to class with her might not want to be national news, and therefore might want to keep her name out of public record? Yep.
      Just because you teach it doesn’t mean you want to go viral with it, or have your life put up for internet fodder, or become the new national poster child for breastfeeding this or that. Sometimes, you just want to do your job and take care of your kid and hope you aren’t screwing up either one of those things too badly. Yes, she handled all of it rather badly, the initial incident and the fallout from it. I really think she couldn’t see the forrest for the trees one morning before her coffee kicked in and made a crappy choice out of the crappy selection she was given…and has been paying for it (and rather strongly judged for it by strangers and reporters alike) ever since.
      If I were her right now, all I would want for Christmas would be for everyone to go away and let her get back to her life.

    • STFUParents

      I just think if she’d handled it differently, it wouldn’t have become fodder for discussion by a larger forum outside of campus. By giving a quote, then asking to rescind that quote, and then asking that her name not be mentioned at all, the whole thing ballooned into more than it should have. BUT, everyone makes those choices every day because of cell phones, social media, etc. She could be tweeted or written about for wearing a certain article of clothing, too; we all are aware of the effects of modern technology, and many of us are at the receiving end of public critical judgment at some point. In my experience, it’s better to address something asap than try to get it to go away, because that doesn’t really work.

  • http://twitter.com/DuchessCadbury The Right Honourable

    It’s the first day of class, I’m in graduate school and only one professor has really “taught” the first day. Other than going over the syllabus and introductions, it’s not that big of a deal. She was totally unprofessional. I hate it when my classmates come to class sick, so why would a baby be any different?

  • Victoria

    Ms. Pine, after insisting on (and being granted) anonymity in the school’s publication, went ahead and published the name of the student reporter in her “Counterpunch” article. Bad form. Pine seems to assume that breastfeeding is the issue here, but I agree with the general consensus that students don’t want to spend so much money on classes/books, and end up being a captive audience to a teacher who’s attention is neither focused on her ill infant nor her audience. Everyone loses. Apparently the administration had offered Pine to take her due paid time off to take care of her child, but she declined it.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/05/exposeing-my-breasts-on-the-internet/

  • Pingback: Mom Told By American Airlines She Couldn't Use Breast Pump On Plane