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Overview
This breast pump belonged to Holly Walker, who used it to express breast milk after she returned to work as a Green MP. Walker was a Member of Parliament from 14 December 2011 until 20 September 2014.
Walker's first daughter was born in October 2013, and Walker resumed her parliamentary duties after taking four months' parental leave. Sixteen weeks’ leave was considered a generous allocation for a parliamentarian, and was predicated on the assumption that MPs would either be men or if they were women that they would not have children and require extended leave.
The demands of parliamentary processes on Walker's breastfeeding routine reveal the gendered nature of parliamentary politics in unexpected ways. While she was breastfeeding her daughter, Walker had to leave caucus and select committee meetings at regular intervals to express milk using this breast pump.
In an online article (Stuff 2 July 2017), Walker commented that: ‘I had to pump milk every two hours just so I wouldn’t leak all over my work clothes. I’d be ducking out of select committee to pump and that kind of thing….I’d work from 8am till 6pm, and Dave [Walker's partner] would bring Esther in for me to breastfeed at lunchtime.’ Balancing these roles and other family responsibilities took its toll on Walker, who resigned before the 2014 general election.
Breastfeeding and working mothers
Mothers’ milk is recognised as the ideal food for new borns and infants and mothers are strongly encouraged by a range of experts to breastfeed their babies. New Zealand employers are legally obliged to give mothers unpaid breaks to breastfeed their babies or express milk at work, and must provide facilities for mothers to do this [Employment Relations (Breaks, Infant Feeding, and Other Matters) Amendment Act, 2008.]
The New Zealand Ministry of Health’s website advises mothers who are returning to work that they ‘can continue to breastfeed by, expressing and storing breast milk so that someone else can feed your baby, having your baby looked after near your work, so that you can go and feed them, having your baby with you at work, having someone bring your baby to you at work for feeds.’
Breast pumps
Historically, breast pumps have been used in hospitals and maternity homes and by nursing mothers to express milk for infants who could not feed from the breast. However, through the twentieth century, as full-time working women became socially acceptable and increasingly economically essential, breast pumps have enabled a mother to express breast milk so that she can continue to work and thereby contribute to the family economy.
Motorised pumps like this one were developed in the late 20th century and make breastfeeding more efficient. They illustrate the intersection between techonology and biological processes.
References:
Alison Clarke, Born to a Changing World: Childbirth in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand', BWB, Wellington, 2012.
Jill Lepore, 'Baby Food', The New Yorker, 19 January 2009
Holly Walker, 'Women can do anything badge', in Bronwyn Labrum, ed., Women Now: The Legacy of Women's Suffrage, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2018
Holly Walker, The Whole Intimate Mess: Motherhood, Politics and Women's Writing, BWB, Wellington, 2017.
Employmernt New Zealand, 'Breastfeeding in the Workplace: A Guide for Employers', Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, ER-013 08/15.
Louise Shaw, Latching On: 50 Years of Breastfeeding Support. La Leche League in New Zealand 1964-2014, La Leche League, Porirua, 2014.
Jaccqueline Wolf, '"Mercenary Hirelings" or "A Great Blessing"?: Doctors' and Mothers' Conflicted Perceptions of Wet Nurses and the Ramificaitons for Infant Feeding in Chicago, 1871-1961', Journal of Social History, 33, 1 (1999), pp. 97-120.