Breast pumpingrequires a strict schedule that doesn't fit squarely in thetraditional workday. (Photo: Shutterstock)

For a breastfeeding mom just returning to work, Sarah Madden has what wouldbe considered the best-case scenario. Her employer, the nonprofitGuidestar, has a brand-new Oakland office with a lactation room that the 36-year-old can duckinto whenever she has to pump. The ability to video chat limits herneed to travel. And, she describes her co-workers as generallyaccepting.

Yet, just a couple months back from maternity leave, Madden can already see the“longer-term consequences” breastfeeding can have on her career.She has to leave meetings early; she can't schedule back-to-backcalls all day; she feels pressured to travel more. On a recentconference call, someone called her out for not flyingcross-country for the meeting. “I have a baby,” she explained.

Related: Sen. Duckworth sheds light on Senate's lack ofaccommodations for new moms

Not all women have it as good as Madden, and many working momsfeel that they get stigmatized or penalized for breast pumping atwork. A new survey shared exclusively with Bloomberg from Aeroflow,a breast pump provider, found that half of the 773 women surveyedhad concerns that breastfeeding at work could impact their careergrowth. Half of the breastfeeding working moms also said they haveconsidered a job or career change.

“There's not a forgiving culture for new moms in the workplace,”says Alexis Diao, a producer at NPR with two young kids. “There isintense pressure to prove that you're the same woman beforechildbirth and before pregnancy.”

Motherhood is one of the biggest causes of the gender pay gap.Women's earnings drop significantly after childbirth, while men'sdon't. That divergence starts the day new moms get back to theoffice, especially for those who choose to breastfeed. “There's areal incompatibility in the U.S. with breastfeeding and continuingto work full-time,” said Phyllis Rippey, a sociologist at theUniversity of Ottawa who has studied breastfeeding and women'searnings.

Not all moms choose to or are physically able to breastfeed; forthose who do, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends thatinfants be breastfed during the first year for the best healthoutcomes. Since only 15 percent of U.S. workers get any paid timeoff to care for newborns, most working moms are forced to pump atwork to keep up with those recommendations.

It's hard to measure exactly how much breastfeeding hurtswomen's long-term earnings, because few surveys look at the twotogether, said Rippey. In a 2012 study, Rippey looked at a raredata set that quantified both issues for mothers with children bornfrom 1980 to 1993. They found that women who breastfed for at leastsix months suffered more severe and prolonged earnings losses thanmothers who breastfed for less time or not at all.

“I call it a breast-feeding penalty,” Rippey said.

Women face stigma for taking time away from their jobs, and theyrun up against the reality that the workday doesn't stop when theyleave to go pump. Breast pumping requires a strict schedule thatdoesn't fit squarely in the traditional workday. Pumping times canvary anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Women have to pumpmultiple times during the workday. That doesn't mesh with theworkday.

“Having to step away and pump when you're at the office can bean isolating experience. You are essentially locking yourself in aroom and, in your deepest insecurities, confirming to people thatdespite your best efforts, you have changed,” Diao said. (NPR,where she works, has on-site lactation rooms.)

Diann Burns, a Virginia based attorney with three kids, saidthat a former employer said her productivity lagged when shestarted breast pumping—just before laying her off. “There is an'I'm-doing-less-work-attitude' about it, in spite of the fact thatI'm not taking a smoke break like other employees,” she said. “Noemployee works every minute. I know I have to get my work done andthen pump around it.”

Workplaces have improved conditions for breastfeeding moms inthe past 30 years. A 2010 amendment to the federal Fair LaborStandards Act requires employers to provide reasonable break timeand a place other than a bathroom for women to pump for as much asone year after the birth of the child. Twenty-nine states also havelaws related to breastfeeding in the workplace. Around half ofemployers have on-site lactation rooms, up from 28 percent in 2014,according to a 2018 survey of over 3,000 employers from the Societyfor Human Resource Management.

Still, many women don't have workplaces with suchaccommodations. Only about 40 percent of women have access to aprivate space, other than a bathroom, to pump, a 2016 study fromthe University of Minnesota found. The schools at which ChelseaWilson works as a nurse, for example, don't have dedicatedlactation rooms. She has pumped in bathrooms, supply closets, andin other people's offices.

“There is still a large problem with compliance,” said GalenSherwin, a lawyer at the ACLU. “There's this notion that women areseeking 'special' accommodations, as opposed to seeking conditionsthat make it possible for them to return to work when they havebabies.”

Rippey found that women's earnings took a big hit because manyof them left the workplace altogether. But women are more likely toquit breastfeeding than quit their jobs entirely. The harder thatworkplaces make it for moms to pump, the less likely they'll stickwith it, the University of Minnesota study also found. Women whohad accommodations were 2.3 times more likely to continueexclusively breastfeeding at the six-month point, the researchersfound. “A lot of women feel stressed,” said Pat McGovern, one ofthe researchers on the study. “If they're racing to this space tobreastfeed and back to their office, and don't feel their directsupervisor is supportive, it can be very stressful.”

Chavi Lieber, a journalist who works at Vox Media, stoppedbreastfeeding her newborn at six months because “the lifestyle ofthe job really isn't cut out for it,” she said. Her office has amother's room, but she spends a lot of her time elsewhere. Once,when she found herself in midtown Manhattan without a place topump, she ducked into the bathroom at Tiffany & Co. “Whilesociety as a whole loves to pressure women into breastfeeding, itsure wasn't ready to accommodate a pumping business reporter when Iactually needed the physical space to do it.”

Read more:

• Many employees still can't find a spot tobreast-feed
• How employers can help new moms transition back towork
• Parental biases are different for single moms anddads

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