Parenting

Elementary School Shames Breastfeeding Mom for 'Making Kids Uncomfortable' on Picture Day

ParentingPublished May 14, 2019
By Kaitlin Stanford
Myranda Juarez speaks to a news reporter about the incident.KWTX

Another day, another mom-shaming story. This time, the incident involves a mom named Myranda Juarez, who was allegedly breastfeeding in the gymnasium of her children's elementary school when she was asked to leave. Now, the Louisville, Kentucky, mom is suing, claiming her rights were infringed.

Juarez, who has four children, was helping out on picture day at Jefferson Elementary School in mid-March when the incident happened.

Around lunchtime, once most of the photos were taken, Juarez's infant daughter Natalie started getting fussy. So she did what any mom would do when that happens -- she checked to see if she was hungry.

Because Juarez breastfeeds, that's exactly what she did. And considering the day's activities were winding down, it seemed as good a time as any.

"I thought it was a good opportunity since we wouldn't be very busy and there were students leaving to just go ahead and take that time to just sit where we were," Juarez told KWTX.

Makes total sense, right? Except that's when something happened that caught the mom off-guard.

Moments later, a school counselor identified as Heather McGovern approached her, according to Juarez, and offered to let her use her office.

But uprooting herself in that moment, mid-feeding, felt a little inconvenient. Not to mention unnecessary.

"I just simply don't have to be moved," Juarez explained to the news station. "I didn't prefer to be moved. I didn't feel like I was making a disruption. I didn't have anybody coming up to me and saying anything further and the volunteers and teachers I spoke with said they didn't know I was doing anything more than holding her and on a phone call."

And so, Juarez declined -- which is when things got tense.

According to Juarez, she got an ultimatum: If she was going to breastfeed inside the school, she had to do it in a private office.

Needless to say, Juarez was a little stunned by that rule, as well as the implications it carried about breastfeeding in public somehow being shameful.

"It caught me off guard," Juarez shared. "I tried to retain my composure."

As for the reasoning behind the rule, there wasn't a ton of explanation offered. McGovern allegedly told her she could be making the students feel uncomfortable, but there didn't seem to be any evidence of that.

"I would never want to put any one in that kind of position, it was never my intent," Juarez told KWTX. "My intent was just to calm my child and put her to sleep."

A few days later, Principal Brooke Schilling told Juarez that this was in fact a schoolwide rule that nursing can only occur within a private office.

But even that one's a head-scratcher. According to the Northern Kentucky Health Department website:

"Kentucky law guarantees that cities, counties and public places don’t ban public breastfeeding. The law prevents breastfeeding in public from being considered an act of public indecency. It also forbids any city or person from restricting a mother from breastfeeding in a location where she is otherwise allowed to be."

Hmm ... considering Juarez was on school property that day not only as a parent in the school but also as a member of the school's Site Based Decision Making Committee, it's clear she was allowed to be there that day. And she's insisted that she wasn't overly exposed or showing a lot of skin, even if that was the issue.

It's for this reason that Juarez has filed a lawsuit against the school, on the grounds that her rights were violated.

In the lawsuit, which was filed by attorney Ted Gordon, Juarez is seeking both damages and sensitivity training for all staff members at Jefferson County Public Schools, so this kind of incident hopefully doesn't happen again.

Not only does Juarez say she's humiliated by what happened but she's also confused, considering that she's breastfed without incident at the school before.

Meanwhile, as the story continues to spread, people aren't holding back with their opinions.

"She should have just moved to the office," said one user on a Facebook thread for WSHV.

"There are ways to feed your baby and not have everything hanging out," said another. "Just saying."

"I'm sorry you're in an elementary school with a bunch of little kids go somewhere private," added another user.

But to many of those comments, there were at least a dozen more that clapped back.

"I really don't understand what the big deal with breastfeeding is," wrote one woman. "Isn't this supposed to be the age of enlightenment?"

"Why can't people let mothers breastfeed in peace???" asked another.

And for all the comments that implied Juarez must have been showing a lot of skin, another woman asked people to consider this factoid: "A baby's head covers more boob than most bikinis these days -- yet one is considered gross while the other is considered sexy ..."

But at the end of the day, all anyone needs to know is this: "She is protected by state law. Don't like it, then don't look."

If you ask me, that message should be spread far and wide, so that hopefully one day (sooner, rather than later) breastfeeding shame will no longer be something a new mom even has to deal with.

Cafemom Logo
This is motherhood #nofilter

AboutTermsContactPrivacyPRIVACY SETTINGSSUBMIT A STORY
© 2024 WILD SKY MEDIA.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PART OF WILD SKY MEDIA
| FAMILY & PARENTING
CAFEMOMMAMÁSLATINAS
LITTLETHINGSMOM.COM
This site is owned and operated by Bright Mountain Media, Inc., a publicly owned company trading with the symbol: BMTM.