I'm sorry........what?

There has been a story going around online about a teen mother who was denied access to a room to pump for a her baby while at school.  (Gratefully the school has decided to create a place for her to pump in reaction to this story's publicity.) Click here for the blog.

What bothered me the most about this wasn't that she was a teen mother nor that she was denied somewhere to pump. It was the attitude of some mothers stating that she should be allowed to nurse her baby in class while at school.

What?

Apparently these people have forgotten what it's like in High School. Granted this new mom now hopefully has a different view of her body after having a baby, but she is in a school filled with hormonal teenagers.  How horribly awkward would it be to try nursing in a class half filled with horny boys who keep leering at you in the hopes of seeing a nipple?  That and nursing a baby while multi-tasking isn't easy. The baby might be still now while it's small, but that doesn't mean a bout of colic isn't going to happen or that she is going to be able to take notes that are legible at the same time.
Frankly, if the teacher cannot nurse her baby while teaching, then the student can't either.

Whatever area that is designated for teachers to pump and store while they are teaching, should be also accessible to the student. It is a work place and work places should have an area open for use that is private for mother's to do this.

I'm not going to touch the issue of her being a sophomore. I could barely talk to boys in 10th grade, let alone do the deed with them.  But this does bring up more issues.  Teenage girls think babies are cute. We have seen them on talk shows and (sadly) on Maury, toting around a baby doll and admitting to having unprotected sex just to have a baby.  Yes, babies are cute. They are supposed to be so they will get the attention they need to survive.  To me there just seems to be a lot lacking in the parenting world since this is happening more and more often.  There is even a show dedicated to it and the stars appear on the front of US and People magazine.  Talking about it with our kids is awkward. BEYOND awkward. But we have to talk to them about it, it's our job as parents to help our kids not get themselves into a huge mess that could effect the rest of their lives.

An interview with actor William H. Macy got me thinking.  Sex is locked up behind an R rating and yet it is something that is natural and (for some people) happens on a daily basis. Yet, guns appear in PG movies that we allow our kids to watch. I'm not saying that I think sex should be in PG movies, but in light of how more kids are shooting each other in recent history, it does make one wonder.

Interview below; for full interview ---> The Guardian

Do you think society today places too much emphasis on sex? 1) Or do we deny it too much?

Yes and yes. I don't know about Great Britain but I think America has got it pretty well bollocksed up. And I think our films have a lot to do with our views about sexuality, and I think we're ill-served by our ratings board, who need to get into therapy, in my opinion. We're so accepting of violence – ugly, ugly, ugly violence and we let our children watch it. I don't let my kids (2)watch it. And yet we are allergic to sex. And I don't know much but I know this: violence is bad and sex is good. Even the bad sex I've had was pretty good. But violence is bad – it's always bad, there are no exceptions. It's bad. And it's ugly and we've got to paint it as it is.

Uh huh.

As an actor I don't want any censorship of any kind but I think we can hold the film industry to a higher standard. If we're going to have violence let's tell the truth about it. It makes me disgusted when I see the hero get the crap kicked out of him and he's making love in the next scene. If you're going to kick the crap our of your hero then have him stay beat up. Tell the truth about it. And this film (3) tells the truth about it. It's people with real disabilities and sex – what could make an audience more uncomfortable? And yet the result of the film is that you love being human; you love humanity, you feel good about yourself at the end of it.

What do you think the effect is on society of these distorted set of values?

You have priests molesting children. You've got Jeffrey Dahmer. You've got a huge porn industry. You've got people going to their grave unfulfilled. You've got husbands and wives torturing each other because we can't talk about anything and we can't be honest about it.

So ... a pretty big effect, then.

It's a huge part of being alive. They say that young kids, especially boys, are thinking about it every four seconds, or something like that. They think about sex more than they think about food. Our normal way of suppressing it does not work. It doesn't work at all. I mean with the amount of crap we've had laid on our shoulders from our parents about our sexuality, it's a wonder we can function at all.