I experienced ongoing bias specifically age discrimination, from a preschool teacher employed at the previous daycare to which my son attended. Of all the parents with children enrolled in that daycare, I believe I was the youngest non-married mother. This raised many issues and concerns regarding comments made by his teacher with regards to my son’s feeding schedule. I enrolled my son into this particular daycare at the age of nine weeks in anticipation of my return to work. At the time my son was exclusively breast-fed and typically nursed every 1-2 hours. My choice to exclusively nurse my son was a decision that I took extreme pride in due to its health and mother/infant bonding benefits. I made the daycare fully aware that my son was excursively breast-fed and should be fed “on demand” or every 1-2 hours, whichever came first.
About 1 month after my son’s start date with the daycare, I experienced an incident with my son’s lead teacher in which she felt that it was necessary to make the recommendation that my son should not be fed every 1-2 hours but instead should be introduced to a pacifier as she believed he is most often in need of satisfying his sucking reflexes rather than being in need of milk. When the comment was relayed to me by the center’s director, I felt that his teacher undermined me as a mother and disregarded my personal choices for my son. I kindly advised the director that I made the request for my son to be fed “on-demand” or every 1-2 hours as this is the feeding schedule that my son has become accustomed to since birth. More importantly I advised the director that my son does not take a pacifier as I prefer to not introduce them to him.
The undermining and complete disregard exhibited by the teacher in this incident along with other occurrences appeared to be blatant signs of age discrimination. To my knowledge this type of behavior was only generated towards me, which lead me to believe that I was placed in the stereotypical category as a “young inexperienced mother in need adult guidance”. Although I was a first time mother and benefited from some advice given by older or more experience adults, decisions such a my son’s feedings and choice to not provided him with a pacifier were ones that I was more than capable of making; after all in most circumstances the mother tends to know their child’s feeding schedule the best.
To turn this incident from an occurrence of age discrimination into an opportunity for greater equity, I believe the teacher would need to self-reflect on her own biases and work towards counteracting them. The teacher may very well hold the stereotypical view of young unmarried mother’s that we are all uneducated, work low-paying jobs, receive government assistance, and incompetent to raise children. If this is true, the teacher need to acknowledge that every young unmarried mother does not fall into this stereotypical category, and suggesting that everyone does may cause some young mothers to become extremely offended. Although I am a young mother, I am proud to day that I am educated, have a career, strive daily to provide my son a good quality of life while laying a foundation for the success of his future.
This was a powerful story. I believe that there were other biases in place as well. I think that perhaps women from America's white collar professional culture value breastfeeding less than other cultures.
ReplyDeleteBut I also hope that your interpretation of the biases against you in this particular episode might mellow with time, as many American early educators do tend to have a bit of a narrow idea about what appropriate practice looks like.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I often think that some teachers feel they know what is best for children. You were an easy target because you were young and she thought she knew better than you in regards to your son. As a director, I have had to address this issue several times. Some of my teachers can be opinionated, but when I confront them on these situations, they describe it as passionate. As educators we must remember we are here to serve the families and offer them options. It is acceptable to respectfully make suggestions but in the end the parent is the one who has to make the choices and live with those choices. We are there to offer support, not control.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!
Sarah