Teaching versus Lactation

This chapter illustrates how the rules of the professional role of teachers and the division of labor set up by the profession are incompatible with the reproductive labor of pumping at work. The chapter starts with accounts from many participants about how difficult it is to meet their bodily needs as teachers, and how this is intensified while pumping. Then the chapter focuses on two teachers: June and Fera. Transcription poems bring their experiences to life. The first poem, “White Knuckling It”, illustrates how to maximize her efficiency in achieving the outcome of student learning, June pushes through her bodily discomfort. She explicitly traces this to the capitalist design of schools, which values work efficiency over the well-being of people. The second poem, “A Lot of Work”, points out how without extra breaktime to pump, there is not enough time for Fera to complete all the work tasks required of her. The need to express milk functions as a potential moment to “come to consciousness” of the neoliberal capitalist structure at play. I end with a positive example of how, after interviewing lactating teachers in their school, a teacher and her students got a grant and created a personal needs room.