Lovelyish

*FACE… meet my desk* … 

I have been in this conversation before… I’m SOOO leaving this alone this time. 

I would have stayed home if my baby were sick.  Missing one lecture is really not that disruptive especially since there are things called Blackboard, Edmodo, E-Learning etc that she could have used instead of having a traditional lecture.  If she just wanted to meet the students face to face, she could have had them come to her office hours FOR 1 FRIGGIN LECTURE.  Students aren’t so unreasonable that they will evaulate you poorly because you miss a single lecture.  For the record, I did extended breastfeeding so I am not against breastfeeding. I would be saying the same exact thing had she been feeding her child with a bottle. I wouldn’t bring a child younger than 8 with me because the chances they would disrupt my job would be high.  However, that’s me.

I wouldn’t have had a problem with it, had I been a student in the class. Guest lecturers suck, and TAs are okay, but I’d prefer the professor. I had a teacher bring her sick child to class one day, and it wasn’t a problem. Unless she stopped teaching to sit and feed her child, I see no problem.

The law says employers have to make accomodations. Knowing the size of college classes, it would have been disruptive to cancel class. I doubt she just ripped open her blouse stripper style to feed her baby. She was covered & able to work so I dont see the issue. Maybe she could have had the TA take over for that part but honestly, people make a mountain out of a molehill.

What if she couldnt afford time off or had no days to use?  In this economy, some people dont have the luxury to stay home when a child is sick. She might have used all her FMLA time to care for the baby after birth.

Breastfeeding is what a woman’s body is built to do (should she choose to do that of course). What did people think we did before formula was invented? I plan on breastfeeding because it’s convenient, it’s beneficial to the baby, saves money & I dont have to worry about a recall every few months. I certainly dont bash formula moms because my sister & friends do it but it’s stupid how breastfeeding is demonized.

If people have problems with it, go to your congressmen, senators or whoever else is in charge & bug them until breastfeeding or pumping privacy in the workplace is guaranteed. An employer is supposed to section off a place at the job & give a mother time to pump her breastmilk for her baby but some asses still try to fight the law for petty reasons. When people have kids or are close to people that do have them, they seem to get more understanding & tolerant of issues like these

I agree with your stance on it.

I think breastfeeding while lecturing is also disruptive… I don’t mind breastfeeding in public, but I’m not sure I’d be able to pay a lot of attention to a lecture someone was given while multitasking in such an obvious way. (IMO, this has less to do with breastfeeding and more with her not focusing on the job she’s getting paid to do – I’d be just as annoyed with a teacher who was determined to feed her child with a bottle while lecturing.)

As a student, I’d rather her cancel class or have someone else teach it. I had a teacher who was sick the first two class periods and we all loved her by the end of the semester.

@Erika_Steele@xanga - I respectfully disagree on the student part. Where I went to college, people would complain over the dumbest shit & get the professors in trouble. When I had Human disease & Anatomy & Physiology, students actually complained because he didnt give a study guide for the tests but other teachers did (mind you these were the ones half ass coming to class & failing). I was pissed when administration made him give those out because my friends & I would come home & study for 4-5 hours a night just for that one class.

The joke was on the students though. We were cool with our teacher & he told us after the test that after he made the study guide (which was no less than 15 pages), he made the test twice as hard & they ended up flunking anyway. XD That test was so hard, I had an A average in his class & I went to lunch in tears thinking I failed.

@Shinbi_Belldandy@xanga - I guess that’s true. I guess I have just never had a problem with students complaining about dumb things. I would have done the same thing your professor did. The sad thing with my students, especially the non-science majors, I give lecture guides, practice tests, and on occassion I will give the practice test as the real test and some students still fail.   I remember the first time I did that, all the students that used the on-line resources were smiling and when their classmates asked why, I said they took the practice test on-line.  When I saw that only 5 out of 30 students bothered to look at it, I didn’t bother to make up a new test.  

@Shinbi_Belldandy@xanga - I agree with this completely. I should have said that it is totally her right to do so. It’s just not the choice I would have made.

@wildchildofthebluemoon@xanga - Agreed. I wouldn’t have had any issues with it. TAs so rarely are comfortable in front of a class and with substitutes, you spend half the class doing mega-slow roll call and the other half explaining to them what you’re presently doing. I’d rather have the professor that knows what they’re doing be there. I don’t want to have to find time to do something separately.

She shouldn’t have to choose between career and child when she really doesn’t have to. If the baby is sick, I fully understand her reasons for bringing her in. It may have been even more of a distraction for her own lecturing if she had to know her baby was ill and the normal caretaker couldn’t be there so she’d have to entrust her child with a stranger or perhaps somebody less adept to that particular baby.
I don’t think this really should be news either, to be honest (though I totally understand why you posted it since, in our society, it is news for some reason). And I also agree with @Shinbi_Belldandy@xanga in that some people don’t have sick days available or can’t afford to miss work because of money — and if you have a child, wouldn’t the monetary source of that child’s care be incredibly important?

i also consider it unprofessional.  

@Erika_Steele@xanga - sounds like the people I went to school with. You’re given everything you need to pass. It’s up to you to use it. Most of the students ended up failing or dropping out & that teacher got fired because he refused to bend but he ended up getting a better job at a nursing school so we’re happy for him.

I just think it’s sad this woman is under so much scrutiny over her decision. I think there’s a law in place too that says if the child doesnt have a communicable disease, it’s ok to bring them to work. I’m not sure if it’s state or federal since it’s been so long since I was in a law class but I mean people should think about it from their own view. A day’s worth can mean the difference between getting bills paid & having stuff cut off or be homeless. It’s horrible we live in that time but we dont have a choice.

I think it’s unprofessional and not suitable. Sorry, but you’re there to teach, not breastfeed your child. If I was paying for college and my lecturer just whipped out her boob and started breastfeeding, I would not be impressed. She should have stayed home with her child and had her TA teach. When you’re a parent, you have to make sacrifices, and it’s not okay to bring a baby into class and start breastfeeding it when you’re supposed to giving a lecture. If she worked retail or in a restaurant, she would have had no choice but to stay off work, and the same should apply here. I have zero problem with breast-feeding in public, but she’s there to teach students who have paid good money to attend her classes and learn, not to watch her feed to her child.

@samescobar - if she’s a college professor, she’d get an annual salary, and she said herself it was the first class, so she obviously hasn’t had any sick days so far. Also, sorry, but I work retail, and if my (hypothetical) child was sick and couldn’t go to daycare, I would have no choice but to stay off from work, sick days or no sick days. It’s extremely unprofessional to haul your child into work and breastfeed them in front of a class of paying students. You couldn’t bring your child to a retail or waitressing job, or a job as a nurse, doctor or anything else and breastfeed them, so why is there an exception for college professors? If you have a child, you have to make sacrifices. If your child is sick, you have to take off work and look after them. That’s part of being a parent. If you can’t afford to do that (or aren’t willing to do that) don’t have kids.

That isn’t very appropriate.. Especially while at your job. You shouldn’t bring your child to work with you anyways. If the baby is sick and cannot attend daycare, she should take the day off and stay home with it. Plus, being out probably isn’t the best idea for a sick baby, i dont know..

I don’t see where the problem is. Sick baby, no other choice… In France she may have taken a day of rest for her daughter (and an hour free for student so). She may have ask for a time to do this, reducing the lecture but being at rest, on a more appropriate place (confortable).

Feeding a baby naturally has nothing offensive or sexual. Only people with deviant mind can see something sexual on it…

There’s a lot of talk about whether it is appropriate for her to bring her child to school at all and whether breast feeding in the work place is appropriate (particularly a college class room), but little mention of the fact that this woman took a SICK infant to a class room FULL of college students.  The child is tiny, but that doesn’t make them any less contagious.  The professor herself stated that this was the first day of class.  Maybe it’s the graduate student in me, but if my professor showed up with a sick child in tow on the first day of class I would get up and leave.  Maybe mommy is comfortable catching baby’s germs, but mommy’s students should not find themselves sick a week later because their professor was inappropriately unprofessional. 

What college student doesn’t love finding out that their class was cancelled? I used to live for that stuff…

Feeding your child is not “personal issues”. She wasn’t taking phone calls or painting her nails. Honestly, as long as no one forces me to see their nipple, I have no reason to complain.

@Rebekka Wilkinson@facebook - But really, a classroom is not a store or a restaurant. Those places are all very different. “Work” does not imply one uniform social code. If the university allows it, there is nothing wrong with it! People bring their children to class all the time and unless they are ACTUALLY disruptive, no one cares. Breastfeeding IS the issue because people have made it an issue. Because there are exposed breasts involved. It’s understandable. Still entirely debatable, though. Feeding an infant while lecturing is different from bringing “personal issues” to work i.e.  stopping class to talk on the phone (which I have seen professors do) 

I would hesitate to call this unprofessional. She had to decide whether to sacrifice her students or her daughter, and that put her in a hard spot. Luckily, she works in a position where it’s not as unheard of to bring your child to work with you, sickness aside. Someone else mentioned that if she had been working in retail, she would have to take the day off. Well, not all jobs work like that, some are more flexible about these kind of things. My mom, for example, brought me with her to her office all the time after school and during summer break, though with the approval of her boss. Her boss also brought her daughter to work. So in this situation, it wasn’t unprofessional because it was a family-friendly workplace. As for whether or not breastfeeding the baby during class is disrespectful and disrupting to the class, there are other things going on that are far more disrupting…e.g. Facebook, other students talking continuously around you, sleeping. Don’t make it sound like it was such a disservice to all the students, because back when I was still in college in 2008, people were still going to class to do anything but learn. Those of us who wanted to learn something could ignore the disruptions. So unless the professor just completely stopped teaching, this shouldn’t even be an issue.

@Confusion_Calamity_Chaos@xanga - To me, potentially catching something from the baby didn’t even register as a concern, though the baby’s comfort in an unknown environment did. Why? Because there are so many people we come into contact with everyday who could be sick and we wouldn’t know. Ideally, every time we’re sick we would just stay home and rest. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work like that and sometimes you still go to class or work because you have to. In those situations, our own livelihood takes precedence over being considerate. No joke, I’ve had an employer who chose to include me as part of the group being laid off because I took a sick day once, and that, to her, was unprofessional. 

Why couldn’t she pump and feed?  

And I think it’s kind of weird that she called her baby an “it”

And for godsakes, first and last day of class are the LEAST important classes of the entire year. You just go to show your face, collect papers and syllabus, zone out, and party afterwards.

@Nele - or college aged kids…

Yeah, this stance is the obvious reason why the class she teaches is 100% needed.  Sad that society continues to chastise women for being women.  So, she brought a sick baby to class and nursed it.  I nursed two babies and at certain ages sick babies do nothing but sleep and eat.  It’s a big old giant, so the fuck what.  But really college age students typically aren’t able to worry about the important stuff in life because they haven’t lived, lived yet.

I’m sure it was distracting but it was only for one class. And let’s be honest, the first class usually ends in 15 minutes, just because students don’t typically have their books and all it is reading the syllabus and stating expectations. I agree with her tenure stand though. I’d have written her off for cancelling the first class. It marks the start of a semester and starts that routine again. Besides, she covered herself while breast-feeding. No one say anything unneccessary.

She refers to her baby as “it”?

I think she was making a statement, whether she admits it or not.

@accumulations@xanga - College aged kids are knowing that breast are made to breast-feed babies FIRST. As a teacher I won’t do this, but even my 5years old pupills who had little brothers and sister know this. Cultural may be… in France, it is less taboo.

@TiredSoVeryTired@xanga -  for me, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that she was breastfeeding. She could have used a bottle or a spoon and I’d still have the same reaction. You can’t just bring your child to work and expect it to be okay. If you’re child is sick, stay home and look after them. That’s called being a parent. I work retail, I couldn’t bring my sick child to work with me and feed them while I was serving customers, so why is it okay when she does it? 

In this case, it’s not just that she’s disruptive, I think, but it is completely unprofessional to bring your child with you to teach a class. Especially if it’s at a breastfeeding age (although, for all we know the kid could have been 7). If a teacher brought an infant to one of my classes I would not be impressed.

I think it was inappropriate. I have no problem with breastfeeding but someone who is trying to tend to a sick baby is clearly not going to be able to direct their full attention to their class. Trying to manage both in front of a room full of students just seems incredibly unprofessional.

Also, I do not buy the argument that students are going to give her a bad evaluation based on one missed class. When I was a college student, most were totally accepting of a cancelled class (if not completely overjoyed). If I were in the class, I would be more upset that I wasted my time going to a lecture in which the professor wasn’t fully engaged.

Also, I had a professor who brought her baby to class twice over the course of the semester. She never breastfed but the baby often cried or got fussy and it was incredibly disruptive. I think it would have been better to have the TA lecture or cancel the class altogether. That’s just my personal preference though.

@Nele - yeah, well this happened in AMERICA, and having just graduated from college a year ago, I’m fairly certain that the mostly american students at my virginia college who think getting blackout 3 days a week and writing messages like “yes means no, and no means anal” for fun, and picking on innocent students who don’t fit the frat/srat stereotype are incredibly immature, bored, and looking for trouble. The fact that this lady was breastfeeding in front of a classroom is completely unnecessary, could have been handled in a mature manner, and from what it sounds like she doesn’t really understand college students.

most college aged kids are thinking about their hormones and sex, not that breasts are used to feed and raise children. OF COURSE everyone knows from breasts comes milk and nourishment, it doens’t matter that 5 anad 6 year olds know that same fact. I think you’re giving young adults way too much credit. And I understand that breastfeeding is a natural and necessary process, but if my professor was breastfeeding in front of the class, I would have gossiped about it for the sheer inappropriateness, and lack of preparation as a mother and professor. I understand what your’e saying about how people shouldn’t view breastfeeding as anything sick or perverted, but given the circumstances in this particular story, it was out of place, inappropriate, unacceptable, and she claims it was because it was the first day of class which to her is one of the more important classes (I’d say completely wrong, first day of class is the least important class in terms of adding to your academic body of knowledge) but this all just sounds like excuses and poor judgment.  
I had a professor once who stood on a chair to write at the very top of the blackboard because she was “concerned about the students in the back who were too far away to read her writing” just to get up there, turn around with her ass in the air, and told the class of 50 kids to not stare at her ass, while she put her ass out there. For what? Writing at theh top of the blackboard did nothing, her writing at the bottom of the board was visible, she did this of her own accord without asking if anyone had trobule seeing from the back, and went through that extra effort for no reason. To me, it seemed like she was just trying to show the class her ass.

@accumulations@xanga - I just finished my master degree (postgraduation) on education,so I’m also a young adult.I’m not 18, but I’m under 25… And if american young adults, while seing a woman breastfeeding are thinking about sex… wow there is a problem.  I can understand that sexual education class can shock, or that puples around 15 can be “exited”, but well, after 18, you have to question something.

I know that many issues concerning women and sexuality are a big deal in US (Romney, and such), but to that point, I’m so astonished.

@Nele - Well I can tell that you’re very mature for your age, so I’m glad I conversationally ran into you, and can only hope that you represent the average person. 

@accumulations@xanga - many of my friend of the same age are like me (many are parents though). I know people more “foufou”, but well, not in that way (more in the alcool and party side).

I suppose it is not the most professional move but I certainly don’t think it’s a “STOP THE PRESS” type of action, either. It was one class, one incident, she made a decision and did what she thought was right. For both her class and her child.

On another note, AU rocks. The student body president came out as transgender to a supportive campus and they were picketed by Westboro Baptist Church. As far as I’m concerned, if you make their picket list you are doing something RIGHT!

To me, the above is newsworthy. =)

Sounds like my opinion is already represented here. I will say American University puts out a pretty good bluegrass station. 

@daydreams_nightmares@xanga - So what?  My dad used to take me to work with him all the time.  I went to work with my mother sometimes too.  Did the professor teach the class, do everything she planned and still get her job done?  I bet she did… especially if it was a tiny baby. 

Can you get your job done with a baby on your hip?  If not, don’t do it.  But a baby in a sling nursing isn’t going to prevent someone from lecturing a class.

I really don’t understand this hullabaloo over breastfeeding, especially when women are the ones attacking other women for doing it outside the home.

Also, this, especially the second half. Quoting the best part, just in case:

“Pine offers garbled and unconvincing arguments for why she breast-feeds,
but she really shouldn’t have to offer an argument at all. Plus,
regardless of how she frames it for herself, the reality is that for a
woman of her class and age, choosing formula means having your peers act
like you’re dishing rat poison into your daughter’s mouth. Funny how we
live in a society that both expects women, especially highly educated
and ambitious women, to breast feed, but forbids them to do so while
pursuing their ambitions. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think pushing
women out of positions of prestige and power and back into the home was
a feature and not a bug of this system.”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/09/12/adrienne_pine_is_a_mom_the_american_university_professor_breast_fed_her_baby_in_class_so_what_.html