Table For Two?

By Amber Wilkinson

As a female, I would very much like to have children of my own one day and I think breastfeeding is the best way to feed a baby the milk it needs. The purpose of the female bosom is to feed the child with nutritional milk, and its the most natural way. This is something many people seem to have forgotten. Moreover, I believe it helps a mother to connect with her child even more so than if she fed her baby from a bottle.

According to the NHS, it has a positive effect on the health of both mother and child. For the infant, they have less chance of having diarrhoea, fewer chest infections and a lower chance of becoming obese. For the mother, she has a lower risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Only 46% of mothers in the UK breastfeed their child at one week old, reducing to less than 1% at 6 months old.

In addition, due to the Equality Act 2010, these women are provided protection if they want to breastfeed their child in public. Therefore, by law, businesses, restaurants, etc have no right to ask the women to leave, move or stop.

A few months ago the issue was brought to my attention through watching Channel 4 news which featured a story about a woman in a restaurant who got asked to leave for breastfeeding her baby. After that, through social media, radio and print newspapers both tabloid and broadsheet, I read into it in more depth and felt for these poor women who were only doing something natural and looking after their young child.

It also angered me when people voiced opinions such as Nigel Farrage that in a place like a restaurant that these women should "maybe just do it in the corner" which implies that it is something disgusting and wrong.

Looking through several articles online, it revealed to me how much of an issue this has been for a few years, but mostly kept out of the public eye.

There are many groups to join and there is a campaign called "When Nurture Calls" that are trying to raise awareness for women that are so scared of being shamed in public that they end up breastfeeding in places like toilets and alleyways. Below is a picture they released in the French magazine Grazia. 

These posters were put on the back of bathroom doors and the first line at the bottom of the picture is "Would you eat here?", which makes people remember that we were all children once and they need to eat too, so why should they have to do that in a dirty, unhygienic place, separated from the rest of society?

It is an American campaign and therefore one I would be unable to join, although there are similar campaigns here in the UK which urge people to contact your local MP to express your views on the matter; who can you contact about it?

There are actually many members of the Government and other organisations that are trying to promote the benefits of breastfeeding with posters such as the NHS with the slogan "Breastfeeding is a team effort", styled in a large, bold font.

One thing that has happened that might help prevent to carry on the sexualisation of breasts is the removal of "page 3 girls" from the Sun newspaper. This had gone on for many years and usually had a topless woman featured. This was done to attract a male audience to buy their newspaper, sometimes just for page 3. Even though there were a lot of complaints after it being taken out of the Sun, it was having a negative effect on the image of women as it was just signifying breasts as something for the sexual entertainment of men and not promising and not promoting their true and original use/purpose.

Raising awareness on social media is the easiest way to show support for these women, because tweeting about it or sharing a post on Facebook could be seen by your Twitter followers and Facebook friends, bringing it to their attention which could lead to them to go and find more information about it too in order to find out what can be done to help. The more it is shared, the more people see it, the more support and awareness is raised.