Missoula is known to Montanans to be full of hippies and other licentious types, but that hasn't stopped yet another breast-related controversy from breaking out. The kerfuffle that erupted when a Hooters restaurant opened there several months back received statewide coverage. (And really, of all the cities in Montana, doesn’t Missoula seem the least likely destination for that particular “theme” restaurant? But I digress.) The latest debate, however, finds not Hooters but another national restaurant chain in the headlights—er, spotlight.
According to an article posted at Missoulian.com in early January, two sisters and their children were having lunch at Red Robin—a franchised burger restaurant—when Sonnie Atwood’s three-week-old son got hungry, too. Luckily, she had plenty of food with her. On her, even.
Atwood chose to breastfeed her son, openly, at her table in the restaurant, and some of the other patrons—apparently having missed the memo about Missoula being a bastion of tolerance—complained to the management. Atwood told the Missoula daily that the Red Robin manager then directed her to cover herself because “several customers had complained that they were losing their appetites.”
What Atwood and the manager did not know—and what most business owners don’t know, I would daresay—is that nursing mothers are actually protected under Montana law. Montana’s “Nursing mother and infant protection” statute (MCA 50-19-501) states that a mother “has a right to breastfeed (her) child in any location, public or private, where the mother and child are otherwise authorized to be present.” Montana’s law is in fact one of the strongest in the country: Montana is one of only nine states that protect a mother’s right to nurse “irrespective of whether or not the mother's breast is covered during or incidental to the breastfeeding.”
Red Robin has apologized to Atwood for the incident, but the battle rages on in the comments that accompany the article at the Missoulian’s website. A surprising (to me) number of commenters have been quite hostile to the idea of anyone nursing outside of the confines of their own home.
As a currently nursing mother who has sometimes needed to nurse in public in Bozeman, I’ve been following the conversation with interest. I’ve never been challenged here, in supposedly more conservative Bozeman. Granted, much of the breastfeeding I do takes place in my car—I really prefer to use my Boppy nursing pillow but don’t particularly want to haul it around with me—but I certainly have had occasions when I’ve been, ahem, exposed.
I did a lot more public nursing when I was living in Prague. What everyone says about nudity being less of a big deal in Europe is true, and beyond that, I always felt more at ease with the anonymity of a big city. I was unlikely to run into a colleague or business acquaintance while I was out and about there—in Bozeman and especially Livingston, it’s a virtual certainty.
Wherever I’ve been though, it has never been my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable. I would imagine that Ms. Atwood feels the same. Still, when it comes right down to it, my first priority is going to be my baby. An adult, seeing the situation, may feel uncomfortable but should have the intellectual capacity to understand the situation: A baby is hungry, and mom’s got the goods. Good luck explaining social norms and the overwrought eroticization of the female anatomy to an infant.
NB: A version of this column was published in today's Business to Business, a publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.