That’s the thing - it’s a conference, it isn’t a job interview or a strategy meeting. It’d be one thing if she was, say, working a booth at the conference and actually working while holding/wearing the kid but the only time she was working was when she was on the panel, and during that time she had childcare. She’s…

I've always admired Italy for its sensible politics and respect for women.

And guess what? A family whose baby who consistently makes noise at a restaurant would be asked to leave. Your friend can repeat herself to you. A lecturer or an actor in a play or movie cannot.

You don’t have kids. Working with them and having them are 2 waaaaaaaay different things (speaking as someone who’s done both). In the infant stage, babies are easy to predict. Does shit happen sometimes that’s out of the norm? Sure - I was at a wedding once where an elderly dude had a heart attack and had to be…

The only take away here is “expectant mother.” Yeah before I had kids, I was this smug too about what was reasonable for working breastfeeding mothers and babies. I hope you remember what a judgmental and clueless asshole you’re being after precious is born and you develop some empathy for other women.

The few moments it takes for the mom to remove her baby causing a distraction is no worse than the same time it takes a person to dig through a purse to quiet their phone, or any number of other possible distractions. And telling mothers of young children they should have to sit this one out is absurd. People have…

No, infants (<6mo.) tend to be much more predictable and controllable in terms of noise/crying than older children. It seems like a reasonable assumption that once a kid can communicate with words that they will be more controllable but that’s actually less true in the experience of every single parent I’ve ever met…

And yet it still happens, even after asking people to silence their cell phones, that on a fairly regular basis someone will not do this and it will go off at an inconvenient time. It’s still not appropriate to lie on the ground tearing your hair out when this happens, which is only barely an exaggeration from how…

That's too bad. Our boss totally supports it and furthermore, we had a client last week who said, "is that a baby?" to one of our moms when she was on the phone and the client praised the mom and went on a spiel about how awesome our company was because we supported moms.

Preach. I’m happy you still comment occasionally. Sometimes white upper class feminists need to be reminded that their worldview is not all-encompassing.

The erasure of mothers, and in particular poorer mothers, is such an issue. It’s one of the ways the feminist movement makes it abundantly clear that the needs of upper-class white women are paramount, while everyone else needs to take a backseat.

I wish I had more stars to give to you.

This story is bullshit, and the actions of her “friend” were bullshit, too. Here is some inspiration for all the working moms from the Italian MEP Licia Ronzulli.

I used to comment regularly on Jezebel for years (under a different name) and stopped because of the feeling the author describes when someone she assumed would be an ally made her feel unwelcome.

I agree. Nobody is less charmed by children than me, but I am even less charmed (negative charmed!) by those people who pretend it’s a reasonable worldview to insist that children should be kept in their homes and away from polite society until they’re 17 and 4 months.

Oh for fuck’s sake. The attitude that you can’t go to someplace without your kid because it’s “professional” and that you need to have a babysitter or child-keeper at all times is anti-feminist to the core and supports notions that the only people who “deserve” to reproduce are the affluent.