More private spaces planned for nursing mothers
Print Edition
SHANGHAI will add 200 more “Care for Mothers Huts” in office buildings and public venues for young working mothers to breastfeed their babies, Shanghai General Labor Union said as it marked the National Breastfeeding Awareness Day yesterday.
A union official, Shao Xinyu, told Shanghai Daily that the additional “huts” will benefit new mothers by providing them a more decent and private place to look after their child.
More than 800 “Care for Mothers Huts” have been built since 2013. Around two dozen of them are in shopping malls.
A standard “Care for Mothers Hut” is equipped with a refrigerator to store breast milk, a wash basin, at least one sofa, books for new mothers, and sanitation supplies. Mothers can either breastfeed or collect milk for their babies.
“I use it at least once every day. It’s clean and cozy,” said Li Ting, a mother of a 6-month-old daughter.
The kindergarten she’s working for, Nanyang Experimental Kindergarten, put up a “Care for Mothers Hut” this April. The person who set up the kindergarten’s hut, Qi Fang, told Shanghai Daily that young mothers also like to take a nap in the hut.
Shanghai has around 200,000 newborns every year. The number is expected to touch 250,000 following the relaxation of the single child policy.
“I used to feed in a storage room in the office, some of my colleagues did it in toilets and some locked themselves in a conference room,” said Aloe Huang, a mother of a 2-year-old. “The milk pumping machine can be loud at times, which can be embarrassing in the office. We proposed a nursing room to the company, but it was rejected.”
Another young mother, Liu Qiong, said it was disgusting collecting milk in the toilet. “It would take around 30 minutes to collect milk and I was also worried about the sanitation condition in the toilet,” she said.
Shao said it was a big challenge for many working mothers and that is why the “Care for Mothers Huts” was welcomed by many companies.
She said they were working to set up more huts in next three years and plan to promote the model nationwide.
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