This story is the perfect example of what not to do to a person who is parenting in 2020.
If there is something all parents need now, it is something of grace. We fight to raise children while working, studying, maintaining our homes, feeding our children, managing their COVID fears, managing our own COVID fears. The list is practically never-ending. So yeah, some support from the outside world is fine right now.
Unfortunately, many parents are getting the exact opposite of grace: Take Marcella Mares, a college student from California who was told not to breastfeed her own child (in her own home, no less) during class.
According to CNN, the mother’s teacher asked all the students to turn on their cameras and microphones during the class, which takes place virtually at this time. Mares responded by saying that she would obey but could have her camera and microphone turned on while she breastfeeds her 10-month-old daughter. Something totally valid to do, right? After all, the mother attends classes from her own home and, like many other parents, may not be taking care of children at the moment, which means that she, like many other parents, has to find ways to be parents. while simultaneously working for a degree.
But the professor’s response surprised Mares. “I’m glad to hear that you can have the camera and microphone on, but please don’t breastfeed your daughter during school hours because that’s not what she should be doing,” the instructor responded, according to CNN. “Just do that after class.”
This would be pretty bad under normal circumstances: when a nursing mother needs to feed her child, she needs to feed her child and no one should tell her otherwise, especially when she is in her own home. And while we understand that a teacher wants their students to fully participate in class, we are in the midst of a global pandemic and parents have no choice but to multitask. The fact that this teacher was delayed when a student simply needed to feed her child (babies don’t exactly understand the concept of waiting for food, you know) while getting an education at the same time, just isn’t right. So it’s not okay.
And it gets worse: apparently, the teacher told the whole class about a “strange” email from a student who wanted to do “inappropriate” things during class. Of course, there’s no way to know for sure that the teacher was referencing this mother’s email, but we can’t even imagine how embarrassed she must have been. Mares approached the school’s Title IX coordinator about the issue and received an apology from the teacher a few days later. It also allowed her to breastfeed during any part of the class (like, thank you for giving a mother permission to feed her own baby in her own home?).
Pandemic or not, being a college student and mother has to be incredibly difficult, and we want fellow students and professors to do more to make it possible. For example, this teacher, who held a student’s son during class to help her, or this teacher who responded perfectly when a student was absent from class due to lack of childcare.
Sadly, this pandemic has made it even more obvious that when it comes to supporting parents in all their endeavors, we have to do better. Mothers are leaving the workforce in massive numbers. A mother claims she was fired after her children were heard in the background of her Zoom calls. And parents around the world are nearly drowned under the weight of responsibilities, the weight of trying to weigh the benefits of school or childcare against the undeniable health risks. It’s a lot, to say the least. And although an apology was finally issued, this story is the perfect example of what not to do with a person who is being a mother in 2020.
