Nurse-in (protest for breastfeeding in restaurants)
Many mothers take children to restaurants and desire to breastfeed their newborns. Some restaurants have objecting to breastfeeding.
A “nurse-in” (nurse + sit-in) is a public protest by mothers, who organize and breastfeed together at an establishment. “Nurse-in” has been cited in print since at least 1999 and 2003 (when a nurse-in was held at Burger King).
Google Groups: misc.kids.pregnancy
Don’t breastfeed in Walmart…
Larry McMahan
4/12/99
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Why don’t you post the address of the Walmart so some nice ladies can organize a nurse in and call the local media. 😊
Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT)
Moms stage ‘nurse-in’ at Burger King
16 women’s lunchtime protest causes no fuss at Sandy eatery
By Dennis Romboy, Deseret News
Published: Friday, Nov. 14 2003 12:00 a.m. MST
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Anderson and 15 other mothers staged a “nurse-in” Thursday at the eatery where an employee acting on a customer complaint asked an Orem woman last weekend to stop breast-feeding her baby in the play area and offered the bathroom as an alternative. The story incensed mothers who don’t see anything wrong with discreetly suckling their children anytime, anywhere, as Utah law allows.
CBS News
By JOEL ARAKAP November 22, 2003, 3:40 PM
Burger King: Breast-Feeding Fine
Burger King adopted a corporate policy Friday allowing women to breast-feed their babies in restaurants, a day before a threatened “nurse-in” at the fast-food chain’s facilities.
The new policy says Burger King welcomes mothers who wish to breast-feed their children.
Washington (DC) Post
Letter From Starbucks
Do Me a Favor, Keep a Lid on Your Double Latte
By Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 11, 2004; Page C01
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Charkoudian’s goal is to liberate women and advance the cause of nursing as a public health issue, which is why she staged a nurse-in at her local Starbucks on Sunday.
New York (NY) Times
‘Lactivists’ Taking Their Cause, and Their Babies, to the Streets
By AMY HARMON
Published: June 7, 2005
The calls for a “nurse-in” began on the Internet mere moments after Barbara Walters uttered a negative remark about public breast-feeding on her ABC talk show, “The View.”
The protest, inspired by similar events organized by a growing group of unlikely activists nationwide in the last year, brought about 200 women to ABC’s headquarters yesterday. They stood nursing their babies in the unmistakably public venue of Columbus Avenue and West 67th Street. They held signs reading, “Shame on View,” and “Babies are born to be breastfed.” Ms. Walters, who remarked a few weeks ago on the show that the sight of a woman breast-feeding on an airplane next to her had made her uncomfortable, said through a spokesman that “it was a particular circumstance and we are surprised that it warrants a protest.”
Time magazine
The Nurse-In: Why Breast-Feeding Mothers Are Mad at Target
If shopping at Target is part of your Wednesday morning plans, here’s hoping you’re not squeamish about public breast-feeding.
By Bonnie Rochman @brochman Dec. 27, 2011
If shopping at Target is part of your Wednesday morning plans, here’s hoping you’re not squeamish about public breast-feeding. Nursing mothers intend to turn out en masse from Maine to Oregon to breast-feed their babies while wandering through after-Christmas markdowns or sipping a latte in the in-house Starbucks — it’s a maternal twist on civil disobedience: the nurse-in.
In recent years, the nurse-in — a.k.a., the breast-feeding flash mob — has become a protest vehicle for nursing mothers, a means of banding together in solidarity over perceived mistreatment. In the most recent protest of significant size, moms gathered in Whole Foods stores last summer to express their unhappiness that a shopper had been told to cover up while nursing. (Whole Foods apologized, even offering snacks to the miffed crowds.)
Eater
Mothers to Stage a ‘Nurse-In’ at a Friendly’s in Support of Breastfeeding at Restaurants
Friday, June 13, 2014, by Khushbu Shah
A group of moms are planning a “nursing demonstration” this weekend in protest of a Friendly’s that allegedly asked a mother to stop breastfeeding her baby at the restaurant. According to WFSB, Tabitha Donohue is claiming that employees of a Friendly’s in Norwich, Connecticut weren’t so friendly to her and asked that she “cover up” while breastfeeding her baby at the restaurant. A manager also apparently asked her if “if she “thought she was offending anyone.” Now, according to the Facebook event page for “Nurse-in at Friendlys in Norwich,” 52 people have said they’re going to the “nurse-in.” The battle cry: “Nursing moms unite and stand against this injustice!” Organizers also explain on the page their reasons for staging the protest: “This isn’t an event to expose ourselves, but to show those who don’t understand, that nursing is natural, can be discreet, AND IS OUR RIGHT UNDER CONNECTICUT LAW!”
The Courant (Hartford, CT)
Mothers Host ‘Nurse-In’ Protest At Restaurant
June 14, 2014|By MIKE KRAFCIK, Fox CT
NORWICH—On Saturday afternoon, more than a hundred advocates brought awareness to public breastfeeding after one mother found herself in an uncomfortable situation at a Norwich restaurant.
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The event was organized after Tabitha Donohue, a mother of an 8-week-old girl, says she was eating lunch at Friendly’s on Monday when a manager asked her to cover her breast or stop feeding the child because she was making other people in the restaurant feel uncomfortable.