While shopping with her son, a young mom from England named Zoe Frangou realized her baby was hungry. She did what any mother would do and found a place to stop what she was doing to feed him.
Luckily she was in a store called ‘Mothercare,’ so it was easy to find a quiet comfortable spot to nurse him amongst all of the baby gear and maternity clothes. However, she was shocked when a store employee informed her that she needed to stop breastfeeding in the store. What she thought was a ‘safe haven’ to feed her baby actually wasn’t.
According to Frangou’s Facebook post, the employee mentioned it was ‘unsafe’ to feed the child where she was due to the staff moving boxes around, but Frangou argued this was not the case. She said the employee actually gave her a dirty look before walking away.
The company states their corporate vision on their website as striving to be “the leading global retailer for parents and young children.” This was clearly not the case when it came to Zoe and her son.
A BBC reporter said of the incident, “It’s utterly wrong, it’s morally wrong, and it’s actually illegal to tell a woman she can’t breastfeed on the premises. Of all places, Mothercare.”
Mothercare’s canned response to Frangou when she alerted them to the situation disgusted her. The company has since reached out to apologize for how she was treated with the following statement:
“We provide all our stores with our breastfeeding policy which clearly states our full support for nursing mothers. Our customers are welcome to nurse their children anywhere on the premises and for those who prefer some privacy, we provide comfortable feeding facilities. We are saddened to hear that on this occasion, our guidelines were not adhered and her complaint was not dealt with immediately. We are fully investigating this incident and will be making sure that all our store teams are aware of our breastfeeding policy and guidelines.”