Gale Pryor, the co-author of Nursing Your Baby, has written another book, Nursing Mother, Working Mother. Last year I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Gale Pryor for lunch. As we were each pregnant with our third baby, the topic of combining work with breastfeeding seemed especially relevant!
Q. What inspired you to write Nursing Mother, Working Mother: The Essential Guide for Breastfeeding and Staying Close to Your Baby After You Return to Work?
I had been asked to write a breastfeeding book for working mothers, and I think that the publisher envisioned a basic manual explaining which pump to choose and how long to store breastmilk. I wasn't really interested in turning out a basic how-to book, and while I was pondering this I attended a La Leche League convention. While there, I went to seminars, went to keynote luncheons, networked with people, took notes ... and I realized that all these women had just spent the day doing exactly what I would do at a professional publishers convention, or what lawyers do at their conventions, which was to attend seminars, speeches, network, etc.! But the difference was that there were 300 babies and small children there. And I wondered why this was such an inconceivable idea for the rest of the world when the LLL does this all the time.
Q. Why do you think that the workplace is so reluctant to acknowledge women's role as mothers?
This is a complicated issue. I think it's a devastating issue for mothers and babies and that is really what is at the bottom of my book - the forces that conspire to divide a woman in two. She has to be one person at work and another person at home. l think this is where the feminist issue comes in, because as women increasingly broke into traditionally male fields they did so by camouflaging ourselves as men. I'm not blaming feminists; this was a necessary first step to move into traditionally male fields. But I think it would be a bizarre success story for feminism if we became, for all intents and purposes, men. I think feminism's success should be about being in the work place and acting like women, which includes being open about being a mother and meeting your child's needs. I think it should be as acceptable to chat about babies as it is to talk about last night's baseball game, for instance. It's
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