Each of my children went everywhere with me during their first year, including to Cabinet and Opposition lobby sessions, meetings, conferences, you name it! And I breastfed on-demand, leaving the room only when I needed to, not when someone else believed I should!
My children are now 17 and 14 so I am appalled that an attitude such as that displayed by a Saskatchewan Rawlco Radio producer is begin voiced today! What was said is, in some ways, not that big a step away from that voiced by Tom Lukiwski, Brad Wall, Kathy Young and unnamed others in an infamous video recorded 17 years ago! It is an attitude that conveys the idea that women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, as opposed to in boardrooms, on TV news and in the political eye. What a disgrace for the station! And what a disgrace for our province! Here’s how the producer referenced Amber Jones’, Green Party of SK Leader’s, decision to hold her child during a media scrum:
Here’s an idea for Jones – how about she gets her own priorities in order before she starts worrying about what the government’s should be.
About 35 breast feeding mothers brought their babies with them to protest a News Talk Radio blog site at the Saskatoon station.
Note the different story in the newspaper coverage:
SASKATOON — Mothering and public life can and should coexist, say moms who held a “mother-in” outside Rawlco Radio’s Saskatoon headquarters Monday.
About 70 mothers and children attended the event, prompted by a blog post in which NewsTalk 650 producer Tammy Robert commented on a politician’s choice to breastfeed during a press conference. Her entry, entitled Children and the Places They Don’t Belong, created lots of debate after it was posted last week. In it, she criticized Saskatchewan Green party Leader Amber Jones’s decision to include her six-month-old daughter in a media event.
The StarPhoenix used ‘Mother-In’ in the headline’! And the story is more in depth. I love it!
I think the Leader-Post may be publishing the letter I wrote immediately after I read their story. Watch for it. It is neither so kind, nor so pretty as this blogpost!
