Pentagon Yields to Families, With Room for Nursing Moms

If they look deep into the Pentagon’s pre-millennial procurement budget, future historians may find signs of a major cultural shift in the U.S. military.

There in the fine print, between the Sidewinder missiles and the supercomputers and the artillery shells, they will find three hospital-grade breast pumps.

The blue pumps are the main attraction in a small room set aside at the Pentagon for nursing mothers--including some who have risen through the officer corps--to extract breast milk for their babies’ later consumption.

At a cost of about $1,200 apiece, the pumps are one of the Pentagon’s smaller-ticket items. But the devices and the special room, which was opened with great fanfare last week, are signs that one of the nation’s most entrenched bastions of maleness is yielding to the national demand for workplace policies that accommodate women and their families.

“We’ve finally come of age,” said David O. Cooke, the civilian official who oversees administrative functions at the Pentagon. “People are saying we should be congratulated,” Cooke added. “But why did it take us so long?”

In fact, said Rona Cohen, a lactation consultant in Los Angeles and founder of Maternal Child Health Services, the Pentagon appears to be joining a select group of American organizations that have made a commitment to lactating mothers. Across the country, she said, there are about 300 corporations that have set aside space and equipment for mothers to pump breast milk.

Lawmakers Joining Trend

That trend may grow as Congress and state legislatures consider measures to protect and encourage breast-feeding by mothers who work. Last year, Minnesota required employers to make reasonable efforts to provide employees break time and a room, other than a bathroom stall, to extract breast milk. One congressional proposal would give companies a tax break if they do so.

The Pentagon’s action puts the military “not at the front of the line, but it’s above the middle,” Cohen said. “There are so many corporations in the country that won’t even recognize that this has anything to do with work.”

To Navy Cmdr. Teri Bandur-Duvall, the Pentagon’s new breast-pumping room means that she can give her boss back his office for about an hour a day and continue to nurse her 4-month-old son, Alexander, for at least a few months more. Since her return to duty in May, Bandur-Duvall’s boss, an Army colonel, has willingly yielded his office twice a day so that Bandur-Duvall could have a private place to extract milk.

That’s a reflection of an established reality among many senior military officers. Bandur-Duvall said: Most are attuned to the demands of service members’ family lives, and want to accommodate them.

But while her boss and many colleagues have been gracious, she added, “I was starting to feel like my welcome was wearing.” She regularly saw other mothers extracting milk in Pentagon bathroom stalls or camped next to electrical outlets inside restrooms.

The new breast-pumping room is a cozy, windowless office equipped with a small table, three comfortable chairs, a sink and a refrigerator. It has a curtain to shield occupants from view and a mirror so that workers can return to their desks with buttons buttoned and epaulets squared.

Within 24 hours of its opening, the room had six mothers pumping and seven in the process of signing up for half-hour sessions.

Others whose due dates are coming in the next several months have scrambled to assure themselves places at the table. The room’s use is being coordinated with time-over-target precision by nurse educator Shirley Baldwin of the Civilian Employees Health Service.

Health a Consideration

“It has such tremendous health benefits for the child and for the mother as well,” said Baldwin, citing studies that show breast-fed infants are less likely to suffer from digestive problems, allergies, diabetes and obesity, while breast-feeding mothers appear to reduce their risk of ovarian and breast cancers as well as osteoporosis.

“I think the Pentagon is responding to the fact that women are an important part of our work force,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles), who sponsored an amendment passed by the House ensuring women the right to breast-feed in federal parks and museums. “If they’re going to take advantage of the talents of women,” she added, “they are going to have to make the accommodation of allowing them to breast-feed.”