The Looming Lactation-Station Crisis and How To Solve It
by
George Reisman
by George Reisman
DIGG THIS
A new crisis
may be brewing, even though until very recently it appears to have
been known only to very few people, possibly just to a single New
York Times reporter and her editors. But on September 1, it
was made public knowledge, when the Times published the story on
its front page. Here is the gist of the Times’ report:
On
the Job, Nursing Mothers Find a 2-Class System
By JODI KANTOR
When a new
mother returns to Starbucks’ corporate headquarters in Seattle
after maternity leave, she learns what is behind the doors mysteriously
marked “Lactation Room.”
Whenever
she likes, she can slip away from her desk and behind those doors,
sit in a plush recliner and behind curtains, and leaf through
InStyle magazine as she holds a company-supplied pump to her chest,
depositing her breast milk in bottles to be toted home later.
But if the
mothers who staff the chain’s counters want to do the same,
they must barricade themselves in small restrooms intended for
customers, counting the minutes left in their breaks. . . .
. . . as
pressure to breast-feed increases, a two-class system is emerging
for working mothers. . . . It is a particularly literal case of
how well-being tends to beget further well-being, and disadvantage
tends to create disadvantage – passed down in a mother’s
milk, or lack thereof.
This should
be enough to give everyone the idea.
I don’t
want to say how much sleep I’ve lost in my efforts to find
a solution for this newest crisis of what the left describes as
“social injustice.” But I have come up with a solution,
in fact, three solutions. Here they are:
-
The government
should immediately order the closing of all corporate-financed
lactation stations. That way, there will be no 2-class system.
There will be only one class: the class of those who do not
have access to such stations.
-
Legislation
should be enacted compelling the installation of lactation stations
in all of Starbucks’ coffee shops and within a convenient
walking distance of every nursing mother wherever she may be,
such stations to afford the same degree of comfort and convenience
as the one the Times reporter observed at Starbucks’
headquarters.
-
The Times
should stop publishing stupid articles whose sum and substance
is a pathetic metaphysical whine at the fact that some people
are better off than others. It and the rest of the left should
finally learn to live with the fact that if everyone is free
to pursue his (or her) own happiness, virtually everyone will
succeed, and do so to an ever-greater extent, though never equally.
They should learn that there is absolutely no injustice in this,
“social” or otherwise, but that there is profound
injustice in the only other alternatives that they leave open,
namely, preventing the success of the more successful (as in
1, above) and in forcing some people to provide for others at
the point of a gun (as in 2, above).
 In
fact, there’s a further lesson for the Times and the
rest of the left to learn here. Namely, they need to apply their
alleged support of “gun control,” which they trumpet ad
nauseam, to themselves and the programs they advocate. Those programs
invariably come down to having the government point its guns at
innocent people. About half the time it’s in order to compel
them, against their will, to do something they do not want to do
but which the Times and the rest of the left want them to
do nonetheless. The rest of the time, it’s a case of forcibly
preventing people from doing something they do want to do but which
the Times and the rest of the left don’t want them to
do. The Times et al. need to stop calling for the use of
guns against people, whether in connection with lactation or anything
else.
September
14, 2006
George
Reisman [send him mail]
is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics, and is
the author of Capitalism:
A Treatise on Economics. Visit
his website.
Copyright
© 2006 George Reisman
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