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Being a college student is no cakewalk. Most of us find balancing classes, work, bills and a social life difficult, but doable. Some brave students, however, undertake the challenge with a much larger burden to bear.
Young parents, especially young mothers, are a largely overlooked minority of the K-State student population. Their infants are not students and therefore pay no tuition, yet our university's policies greatly affect their well-being.
K-State's lack of on-campus lactation rooms makes it nearly impossible for breast-feeding mothers to be full-time students, requiring them to choose between their educational aspirations and the health of their children.
The benefits of breast-feeding are well established. A child's immune system is not fully formed at birth and is strengthened by continual breast-feeding. If a mother gets sick, the antibodies produced by her body are passed on to the child via breast milk, while the sickness is not.
According to the May 2008 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, breast-feeding has been scientifically proven to improve cognitive development. This is at least partially a result of its high-fat content — 7 percent in breast milk, compared to only 4 percent in whole milk.
Breast-feeding is also significantly cheaper than formula, making it a good alternative for mothers scrimping and saving to finish their degrees. Choosing to breast-feed, however, is not as simple as it might seem.
Natural lactation is about supply and demand — if the baby is not extracting milk from your body, then your body will not produce milk. In order to sustain breast-feeding, a mother must breast-feed 8 to 12 times a day.
For a student with a full-course load, that's just not possible. Breast pumping, however, makes it so. Not only does it ensure that a mother continues to produce milk, it means she can save it to feed the baby while she is in class or at work.
The problem with breast pumping is finding a place to do it. The widely pervasive, yet completely unfounded, social discomfort with breast-feeding, combined with the huge number of students circulating around campus, makes every option unattractive.
Lactation rooms, found at several major universities, make pumping, and therefore breast-feeding, a possibility for thousands of young mothers who could not otherwise make that choice.
For example, North Carolina State University offers lactation rooms in four locations on campus. These rooms include rocking chairs, magazines, informational literature and the pumps themselves (excluding some personal parts brought by individual mothers). The University of Indiana provides similar services at its student union.
Not enough examples? The University of Kansas' Women's Resource Center lists 13 on-campus special locations for breast-feeding or pumping. Harvard has seven locations.
K-State already has many wonderful support programs for women, such as the Women's Center in Holton Hall and the Women's Clinic of Lafene Health Center.
It would not be difficult to designate and fund several rooms on campus for breast-feeding and breast pumping. Doing so is one of the best ways we can support young mothers making the difficult choice to pursue their academic goals without sacrificing the health and well-being of their children.
These young women deserve our support, not a cold shoulder. Refusal to designate on-campus lactation rooms is nothing short of discrimination against female students with children.
-Beth Mendenhall is a senior in political science and philosophy. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.
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25 comments
i didnt knock those girls up, get a bottle