I imagine that all of you will be aware of what has been involved in what we can begin to call the Primark case. Yesterday, in response to the policy of the aforementioned company of not allowing breastfeeding women to breastfeed their babies in their establishments, a meeting of nursing families in stores of the said brand was organized to defend that breastfeeding in public is a right and a necessity.
The debate about whether or not it is convenient for women to breastfeed their babies in public, fueled by women with a certain public quorum like Adriana Abenia, who lamented last summer that on more than one occasion she had been textually quoted - indigestated the food to observe in front of me a woman taking out the udders to feed her baby with her fluids. The double standards of some are, at least, surprising.
For the good common
Leaving aside the twisted choice of terms, there each with his literary style, what this person and many others may not have come to apprehend is that breastfeeding is not only a right of the mother and the son, but a need both physiological and psychological and, today more than ever, social.
Now that we like to talk about cuts and savings so much, it should not be forgotten that breastfeeding is not only beneficial for the baby who enjoys it and the mother who offers it, but for the whole society that will see medical costs and absenteeism, among others, reduced thanks to this millenary practice.
One for all and all for one
I do not mean by this that mothers should be forced to breastfeed, much less, but they must put in place the necessary means so that breastfeeding does not become an obstacle course.
Being a mother today is not easy. The chimerical labor conciliation, the lack of help, logistical impediments and economic constraints have contributed to the birth rate for years without guaranteeing generational replacement. It is not necessary to be a mathematician to see that with these birth rates that in 2012 did not reach a birth for every one hundred inhabitants, our health and pension systems make water everywhere.
We need more children, to hinder and alienate the work of mothers in any way that only makes the situation worse.
Intimacy blessed treasure
One of the recommendations that makes me the most grace is when individuals of all kinds and conditions declare with extreme conviction that breastfeeding is an intimate act and that as such should be carried out in privacy.
Here the problem is where and who put the scale of the intimate. If I were to eat with my mouth open, walk a hairy ass in a thong, die with the brave potatoes attached to the palate and get a booger should also be included in the list of activities banned to the intimate redoubt.
Believe me when I tell you that I have also suffered indigestions of varying severity due to the lack of manners and knowing how to eat some, but I consider that the price of turning the neck to look the other way well compensates the risk of falling into intolerance, discrimination or any kind of phobia.
Pure vice
To pictures I also stay when it is suggested from certain pulpits that public breastfeeding is a vindictive and scandalous act. As if we mothers did not have enough to drag our dark circles and our children around the world to turn each of the things we do a thousand times a day into a political proclamation. Do not fool yourself, most all we want is for the magic hour to come, that when everyone sleeps like the little angels they never are, to fall asleep on the couch. No more
Perhaps during the maternal leave of the first child one can afford the luxury of staying at home to breastfeed her baby in the privacy and comfort of her three-seater, but the routine, the work, the children who multiply, the husband who is bored and the human need to socialize, make life gain ground and we meet more often with a hungry and weeping baby on the street, in the restaurant, in the store or in the supermarket.
At that time, those wise hormones that guide us so well, ask us the only thing that can end this stress situation, feed our baby. It is then and only then, when mothers value all the variables as how much is left to the activity we are developing, how much can the baby expect, how far is the next intimate zulo, what irreparable damage will suffer the psyche of the local public in question, and we decided, using a very sophisticated algorithm called common sense, where and when are we going to breastfeed our baby.
In the same way that other times we have to decide where the medium that still does not control will pee or how to minimize the damage of a radioactive poop. The resolution of these high-risk activities is usually not idyllic, nor exemplary, but generally guarantees the survival and relative well-being of the parties involved. Don't ask us for more.
Admission rights
Finally, a reflection on Primark's right to censor certain practices in its stores. I understand that, commercially speaking, filling the stores of nursing mothers does not fit your marketing strategy. As I also understand that if it were better for them than for their shops, only stunning women with long hair and tight innkeepers would walk. What better claim than filling the testers of beautiful people who all the clothes feel like a glove.
They could certainly limit access to the fat, those who wear glasses or, why not, the ugly. The question is whether that is a door we want to cross and what we become if we do it. More important than the freedom we have is the use we make of it.
In any case, given the birth rates and breastfeeding rates we have, I don't think there is an uncontrolled avalanche of bare breasts that endangers decorum and public sensitivity.
More important it seems to me in the time that they run to defend a practice, breastfeeding, which is not only a right but a necessity.
