Costa Rica News – These should be on the “Got Milk?” commercials with a baby and a milk mustache.
The social networks are bursting with criticism for the installation by the Municipality of San Jose of booths for mothers to breastfeed their children, and at the same time offers mothers shelter from the rain and provide them with a place to change diapers.
The first booth, located in front of the Correos (Post Office) building was inaugurated Friday morning. The booths, donated by the Plycem company, will be located at a number of strategic points of the city, such as hospitals, the children’s museum and city hall.
Deputy Mayor Paula Vargas Ramirez, said the city wants to provide an option where mothers feel comfortable a safe to breastfeed their infants. “We are grateful to Plycem and are committed to encourage these spaces (booths) be used in different parts of the country,” said Vargas.
However, the idea has been heavily criticized on the social networks, for its pink colour and their eventually being used as urinals for the homeless.
Critics say the booths encourage the idea that women should hide breastfeeding, as is if it were a morbid act, people seeing breastfeeding in public as evil.
Others say that by having these booths, it gives the “prudes” an additional argument, “they have a place, why not go there?” And it takes away the right of mothers to breastfeed anywhere, “having to move to a booth and if occupied the baby has to wait to feed?”
“If I don’t like to see a woman with her breast out in public I turn the other way and that’s that”.
“The haters are a group of people who specialize in hate and criticize everything, these are people usually that have never done anything or proposed anything. I ask, who is it harming to have a private place, for they that want it, to use?”
There are also those, not many, in support of the breastfeeding booths.
One woman wrote, “I find it uncomfortable breastfeeding anywhere and I look for a comfortable area that is not surrounded by people, but it’s up to me and not the people of double standard to decide for me.”
From QCostaRica, Edited by Dan Stevens
