Please indulge me in a quick little political action plug that will only take a few minutes of your time.

All of my kids were breast-fed; it’s cheap, and the healthiest way to feed a baby. I think it gave my kids a good start at life; my kids were certainly sick less often than the general population I have for comparison; I credit milk straight from the tap, rather than reconstituted from a powder, for that.

You’d think that, given that breastfed kids get less sick (and I’m sure there are some stats somewhere that back up my anecdata) employers of working mothers (i.e. pretty much all employers) would do what they could to enable breastfeeding, since fewer sick kids mean fewer days mom has to take off to take care of them. A couple of minutes here and there* throughout the day, in trade for more total at-work time; you’d think it’s a win-win for everybody, right? Surprisingly, many employers don’t make this connection, and maintain policies that make the life of a working, nursing mother way more difficult than it has to be.

Thankfully, Congresswoman Maloney from NY and Senator Merkley from OR put together a bill to see about fixing this. If you’re so inclined (and I hope you are), why don’t you take a minute and send your congresscritter a letter asking them to support the Breastfeeding Promotion Act in order to ensure that working mothers have clean, appropriate, non-demeaning facilities for pumping at work (no dirty restrooms, please), and are offered sufficient opportunity to make use of them.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled pontificating on the news and pop culture of the day.

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* –a few minutes a day, by the way, few companies seem troubled about when they grant them for smoke breaks, at least around here; at least these few minutes don’t add up to long-term health care costs, and, in fact, probably reduce them.