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Breastfeeding While Working
Nursing parents should not be penalized at work because they want to provide food for their babies.
Legal protections exist to help parents maintain milk supply while away from their children, but not enough workers understand their rights or where to go when those rights are violated. As a result, parents are forced to wean their babies early, endure painful health complications, or even lose their jobs.
A Better Balance is educating and empowering nursing mothers to exercise their rights on the job, and helping to enforce laws designed to support women who want to continue breastfeeding after they return to work.
Breastfeeding Rights in the Workplace
Federal law and many states require employers to give nursing parents time and space to express breastmilk in the workplace. We educate and empower nursing parents to exercise their rights at work. To learn more, visit the Workplace Rights Hub, our state by state legal guide to understanding and asserting your rights to breastfeeding in the workplace. You can also visit our “Talking to Your Boss About Your Pump” series to help you figure out how to discuss your breastfeeding needs with your employer.
Federal Advocacy
We are leading efforts to pass the PUMP (Providing Urgent Maternal Protections) for Nursing Mothers Act, which will increase critical protections for nursing parents, ensuring millions of workers have a clear right to pump breastmilk at work. The PUMP Act will strengthen the 2010 Break Time for Nursing Mothers Law, extending the law’s protections to 9 million employees who are currently uncovered due to the law’s inclusion in the Fair Labor Standards Act, including nurses, teachers, and software engineers. Learn more here.
State Advocacy
A Better Balance is working to improve enforcement of existing laws and to expand protections for nursing mothers at work and beyond. We fight for stronger statewide break time and space laws, with recent victories in Georgia, South Carolina, and New York.
Workplace Rights Hub
Resource Articles
60%
of women stop breastfeeding earlier than they would like.
50%
of new mothers report that their plans for employment had an impact on their baby-feeding decisions
Only 40%
of nursing moms have access to both adequate break time and a private space to express breast milk while at work
