Page 1239 of Obama's heathcare bill

Apparently page 1239 of the new Obama healthcare bill promises some relief for breastfeeding women of America, at least the ones who work for a company with more than 50 employees. I just read an article on CNN about this. The link said "Breastfeeding page 1239 of health law" and showed a picture of a cute little baby. My first thought as I clicked on the link was oh good maybe the health care law has at least one good thing in it. I think breastfeeding in important and like the article said it does tend to be somewhat looked down on in our society. Well the article was all about how it is to hard and embarrassing for working mothers who want to breastfeed to pump milk at work so the companies with more than 50 employees must now provide a private place for them to pump. Nothing wrong with private places to pump - I definitely wouldn't want to sit on the toilet in a bathroom stall and do it. But I thought about this issue a lot and here is what I came up with.

Society and now the government are pushing companies to be more "family friendly". We hear that term a lot, "family friendly", one would think that would mean good for families. It would seem logical to me that a family friendly policy would make it easier to be a good parent and a good spouse. But I have to disagree, many, not all but many, "family friendly" policies, including this one, don't make it easier to to be a good parent it makes it easier for parents to be employees not parents. This whole family friendly issue really creates a big dilemma in my moral thinking. On one hand policies such as this breastfeeding one, paid maternity leave , flexible time off, or on-site day care seem great. Like I said I am a big fan of breastfeeding, I am also a big fan of having children and also of being an involved parent. But these policies also tend to make it easier for parents to spend more and more hours away from their children and to feel less and less guilty about it. And that is not the way that families are strengthened.

A conference talk I listened to came to mind while reading this. It said that Satan doesn't usually interrupt our church services he interrupts our families. I think these type of policies are one way Satan is doing this. It helps mothers be employees, not mothers - it helps mothers not be moms. A baby young enough to be breastfeed needs to cradled in its mothers arms while eating -not given a bottle by some paid day care provider, even if the bottle does contain breast milk pumped in private room at office. Now I know that the ideal of every child having a stay at home mom isn't realistic. There are many families where this just isn't a possibility. But I think in the name of "family friendly" Satan is making it easier for families to destroy themselves.