by ADRIENNE PINE
I work in a family-friendly setting. The staff and administration, my colleagues and my graduate students at American University have been nothing but supportive of me during my difficult first year as a parent. AU is also a campus that prides itself on its gender and sexuality inclusivity, a place where students commonly refer to themselves using words like cisgender, and where the male-bodied student body president came out last year as a woman. It wasn’t until some of my undergraduate students saw me feed my baby through my breast that my workplace became a hostile environment.
A week ago Tuesday my baby woke up with a fever. It was the first day of my intro “Sex, Gender Culture” class with 40 students and a new TA. Cancelling did not seem like an option. A friend who was visiting from Chile said to me over breakfast, “Just take her to class. You’re a working parent. Your students won’t care. It’ll be a teachable moment.”
I have tried to maintain as much of a separation as possible between my small family and my professional life, in large part to protect my daughter from the not-infrequent gendered attacks I receive in response to my writings. I have never mentioned her on my blog (which has made publishing field notes increasingly more difficult) and I try not to talk about her in a way that will make people think it’s appropriate to treat me as some sort of essential mother. I love my daughter unconditionally, but she does not define me, nor do I hope to define her. The last thing I wanted to do was turn Lee’s cold into a “teachable moment.” But desperately weighing the situation, it seemed that I had little choice. I could not bring her to daycare with a fever, and I did not feel like it was an option to cancel class.
I sped through the lecture and syllabus review with Lee, dressed in her comfiest blue onesie, alternately strapped to my back and crawling on the floor by my feet. The flow of my lecture was interrupted once by “Professor, your son has a paper-clip in his mouth” (I promptly extracted it without correcting my students’ gendered assumptions) and again when she crawled a little too close to an electrical outlet. Although I specifically instructed my teaching assistant, Laura, that helping me with my child was outside her job description, she insisted on holding and rocking Lee, allowing me to finish class without any major disruptions. When Lee grew restless, I briefly fed her without stopping lecture, and much to my relief, she fell asleep.
The end of class came none too soon, and I was happy to be able to take the bus home and put my sad baby in bed where she belonged. It seemed like things had gone as well as they could, given the circumstances. Until I got the following email the next day:
Hello Professor Pine,
My name is Heather Mongilio. I am one of the news assistants on The Eagle. I hope you had an enjoyable first week of classes. It was brought to our attention that you breast fed your child during your “Sex, Gender and Culture” class. I was hoping to be able to talk to you in order to discuss what happened in class and allow you to speak about the matter in your own words. I understand the delicacy of the matter and I do not want to make you feel uncomfortable, but for the story to have the most balanced angle it would be best to have your thoughts…
–Heather Mongilio
I was shocked and annoyed that this would be considered newsworthy, and at the anti-woman implications inherent in the email’s tone. “Delicate”? “Uncomfortable”? What did the Eagle, AU’s official student newspaper, think I was? A rice paper painting? A hymen? If I considered feeding my child to be a “delicate” or sensitive act, I would not have done it in front of my students. Nor would I have spent the previous year doing it on buses, trains and airplanes; on busy sidewalks and nice restaurants; in television studios and while giving plenary lectures to large conferences. I admit those lectures haven’t always gone so well (baby can get fidgety), but as a single parent without help or excess income, my choice has been between sacrificing my professional life and slogging through it.
Trying to be polite yet as firm as possible, I responded:
Hi Heather,
I really wish this weren’t considered “newsworthy,” but I suppose that’s why a feminist anthropology course is necessary at AU. I had no intention of making a political statement or shocking students. I merely had a sick baby who I couldn’t leave at daycare on the first day of class. It was unfair to leave the job of teaching the first class to my teaching assistant, so I had two choices: cancel class, which would have been disruptive to students (and which could also negatively affect my student evaluations, putting my tenure at risk), or bring the baby to class. I chose to do the latter. As it turned out, the baby got hungry, so I had to feed it during lecture. End of story.
Adrienne Pine
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, American University
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