A mom, who was attending a parenting seminar at the All Saints' College performing arts theater in Bull Creek, Perth, got humiliated when she was asked to do her breastfeeding somewhere else. Renae Rutherford was feeding her weeks-old son while listening to the seminar hosted by Maggie Dent, a parenting expert, when she was asked to leave.
Dent's team, including her husband, noticed Rutherford as she had been crying while feeding her son in the building foyer instead. Dent's husband apologized and promised to investigate the incident. A member of the organizing team, however, rudely lectured her on the hygienic issue of breastfeeding inside the theater.
"To be asked to leave a venue that was hosting a parenting seminar came out of left field," Rutherford said."I'm pretty resilient, but I burst into tears and felt embarrassed and humiliated," she added.
School officials already apologized to Rutherford on Facebook even as they claimed it was not the school's policy to ban breastfeeding inside the campus, according to Perth Now. They also promised to look into the incident.
Society has remained uncomfortable with mothers breastfeeding their kids in public, as per CNN. A mom breastfeeding her baby at the Anthropologie store in Beverly Hills was outraged when she was led to the bathroom. Her social media rant resulted to the staging of protests at the store of over 100 women.
First-time mothers breastfeed in places where they are comfortable but get used to doing it in public later on, according to NHS. A Start4Life survey revealed that public breastfeeding has the support of up to 72 percent of the respondents. People may find it disturbing at first, but they will get used to breastfeeding in public.
Mothers have the right to breastfeed even in a public place, so no one has the right to ask her to leave the place solely for that reason. Most malls have areas designated for breastfeeding so moms might want to get to know these places too for their own comfort. Other moms might find baby slings useful if they don't want to reveal too much while breastfeeding.
