Portugal’s barmy breast-feeding debate has taken on an even more ridiculous turn today, as it emerges that the minister (of labour, solidarity and social security) – who claimed some mothers were taking time off work for breast-feeding until their children started school – was lying.
According to reports, “there are zero complaints against mothers for breast-feeding” beyond the pale, although there are some complaints by mothers, regarding employers refusing them the right to two-hours off per day to breast-feed their infants.
The thing about this story is that it was always ‘silly season nonsense’: the minister made her erroneous assertions in an interview on the government’s new labour reform, to justify a decision to restrict time-off work for breast feeding to the first two years of a child’s life.
Not only is two years perfectly sufficient for most people (mothers and babies), if there is a clear medical reason for breast-feeding to be continued, the government’s new law will allow for this – as long as there is a doctor’s letter.
Talk about a storm in a tea-cup. This is a storm in a breast pump. But it gave left-wingers ample opportunity to beat their own breasts in ‘indignation’ at the “inhumanity” being shown to women…
The trouble is ‘the minister was lying’: “Zero complaints against mothers in breast-feeding”, screeches Correio da Manhã tabloid today, alongside the picture of the minister looking less than pleased. And thus the ridiculous situation has shown itself to have been a complete waste of everyone’s time (and attention).
For now, the minister has emerged as someone who doesn’t appear to stand for ‘solidarity’ at all – and that is not good considering the wealth of material that has to be ‘discussed with social partners’, and ultimately approved in parliament.
CM cites the Commission for Equality at Work, and the Authority for Labour Conditions, “confirming that there is no record of abuses by mothers” of the ‘breastfeeding benefit’ open to them, in spite of the minister “guaranteeing” that the government “knows of many practices” of this form of employment abuse. (Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho then went into her own idea of what toddlers should be eating by the age of two – “soup and other things” – suggesting she may never have had one.)
All in all, the ‘profound labour reform’ has got off on the wrong foot, but then, most things do when it comes to politics in Portugal.
Comment by Natasha Donn
