Breastfeeding in the Workplace: What's Wrong with the Right?

Abstract

There are two main differences between the Philippine and American statutes that promote breastfeeding. First, the Philippine law provides that lactation breaks should be compensated while the American law does not. Second, the Philippine law provides for “culturally appropriate lactation care and services” whereas majority of American states exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws.Accommodating the need of a nursing employee to take regular breaks to express breast milk is appropriate but giving her full pay while clearly not engaged in her usual duties is undoubtedly the very kind of special treatment that paves the way to animosity not only between employer and employee but also among co-employees. Forty minutes of paid lactation break for every eight-hour working day translates to about twenty-two days of paid leave each year. This is certainly no joke for small and medium-sized business enterprises. On this basis alone, employers already have a good reason to discriminate against the hiring of female employees of child-bearing age.Along the same vein, resentment might also arise among the nursing employee’s co-workers because of possible perception of unfair special treatment. This can be especially true for women who do not breastfeed, whether by choice or by necessity. It is a difficult proposition to advance that a single father, an adoptive mother, or a biological mother who is suffering from a medical condition that precludes her from breastfeeding, might need to work overtime to earn extra income to purchase expensive infant formula while a nursing mother protected under this law receives her regular income even when she is not performing her usual occupational duties. In the end, the privilege can result in subtle discrimination against a nursing employee because of the perception that her family duties are getting in the way of her job performance, and, she even gets paid for it.Finally, the statutory grant of paid lactation breaks might be hovering around excessive government endorsement of breastfeeding to the point of casting stigma on women who cannot or do not want to breastfeed. The bottom line is that breastfeeding should purely be a woman’s choice that must be accorded due respect regardless of whether her decision is to engage or not to engage in such activity, and regardless of her reason, or even the lack of it, behind either decision. Breastfeeding is still an imposition upon a woman’s body, a servitude that cannot be required against her consent. Some, but definitely not all women, may opt to breastfeed their infant, hence, it is enough that we provide the opportunity to express and store breast milk for those who have the capacity and the desire to do the same. However, we should not go further towards discrediting those who cannot or do not.