Recently I was contacted by a business owner looking for some advice about what to put in some planned mothers' rooms in his retail stores.
The stores (for now the name will remain anonymous) are located in the Southwest and West, and the owner would really like to make them more breastfeeding-friendly. Though the rooms will be available to any mother, he's thinking of them first as rooms for nursing moms. He writes, "I'm excited about the opportunity to educate mothers about the beneficial aspects of breastfeeding - for both mom and baby, and the opportunity to inform mothers about their legal rights, or lack thereof, of nursing in public."
In our exchange I've expressed my opinion that it's very important that mothers' rights to breastfeed in any part of the store not be compromised by the availability of these rooms. Of course, it's likely that the law in these states protects mothers' rights to nurse anywhere in the store. I explored this "convenience vs. quarantine" concept a bit in a post a few months ago. These rooms can't turn into the only place a mother can nurse, and the store staff can't try to usher breastfeeding mothers into the mothers' rooms.
Below is a poll (may have to wait for it to load) for you to express your opinion about the contents of a mothers' room. You can vote for more than one item - just keep returning to the poll and clicking. Feel free to leave comments in the comments section below as well.
