Breastfeeding in Public: The Last Frontier of Body Policing

A Natural Act, Still Treated as Indecent

In 2017, a woman in Hyderabad was asked to leave a restaurant because she was breastfeeding her child. In 2019, a flight attendant on an Indian airline reportedly asked a mother to cover herself or move to the lavatory. In 2023, a college student in Mumbai was told by a professor that breastfeeding during a lecture was "inappropriate."

These are not isolated incidents. They are manifestations of a cultural discomfort with the female breast that persists despite — and sometimes because of — the most fundamental biological function it serves. Breastfeeding in public remains controversial in much of India and much of the world, and the controversy reveals more about society's relationship with women's bodies than it does about the act of feeding a child.

A baby eating is not indecent. A society that treats it as indecent is revealing something about itself.

The Sexualisation Problem

The discomfort with public breastfeeding is rooted in the sexualisation of the female breast. In Western culture, and increasingly in urban Indian culture, the breast has been so thoroughly associated with sexual function that its biological function — nourishing infants — has become secondary. The breast is for looking at, for desire, for commerce. It is not, apparently, for feeding babies.

This sexualisation is not natural or inevitable. It is culturally constructed. In many Indigenous cultures around the world, breastfeeding is unremarkable — a normal part of life that does not require cover, concealment, or apology. The discomfort with public breastfeeding is a product of cultures that have redefined the female body primarily in terms of its sexual value to men.

In India, the sexualisation of the breast coexists with a paradoxical prudishness. Women are expected to cover their bodies in public, to be modest, to be discreet. But the same culture that demands modesty also produces sexualised images of women's bodies for advertising, entertainment, and commerce. The message is contradictory: women's breasts are for public consumption only when they serve a commercial or sexual purpose. When they serve a biological one, they become obscene.

The culture that puts women's breasts on billboards to sell products is the same culture that asks women to hide their breasts when they feed their children. The contradiction is the point.

The Legal Landscape

In India, breastfeeding in public is not explicitly illegal. The Infant Milk Substitutes, Feeding Botties and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act of 1992, as amended in 2003, includes provisions protecting a mother's right to breastfeed. But the law does not create enforceable rights in public spaces, and its protections are largely symbolic.

Some Indian states have made modest efforts to create breastfeeding-friendly spaces. Kerala, which has India's highest literacy rate and one of its strongest public health systems, has introduced breastfeeding rooms in some public buildings and transport hubs. But these remain exceptions. In most of India, a woman who wants to breastfeed in public has no legal protection and limited practical support.

Internationally, the picture is more varied. Many countries have explicit legal protections for breastfeeding in public. In Australia, breastfeeding is protected by anti-discrimination law. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 protects breastfeeding as a sex-specific right. But even in countries with legal protections, cultural attitudes often lag behind the law.

The law says you can breastfeed in public. The social pressure says you should not. For most women, the social pressure is more powerful than the law.

The Class Dimension

The breastfeeding-in-public debate has a class dimension that is rarely acknowledged. Wealthy women can breastfeed in private spaces — at home, in the car, in the lactation room of an upscale mall. Poor women — street vendors, domestic workers, factory workers — have no such option. They breastfeed in public because they have no choice.

The stigma falls disproportionately on these women. A middle-class woman breastfeeding discreetly in a café is treated differently from a roadside vendor breastfeeding on a footpath. The class dynamics ensure that the most visible breastfeeding is also the most stigmatised.

In India, where the vast majority of women who breastfeed in public are from lower-income backgrounds, the stigma is inseparable from class prejudice. The discomfort is not just with the exposed breast. It is with the woman attached to it — her class, her caste, her refusal to be invisible.

The women who breastfeed in public are not making a political statement. They are feeding their children. The politics comes from everyone else.

The Impact on Breastfeeding Rates

The cultural hostility to public breastfeeding has measurable consequences. Research consistently shows that social stigma is a significant factor in breastfeeding cessation. Women who feel uncomfortable breastfeeding in public are more likely to stop breastfeeding earlier, to introduce formula earlier, and to experience guilt and distress related to breastfeeding.

In India, where the WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, the rates are mixed. India has relatively high rates of breastfeeding initiation — over 90 percent of infants are breastfed at some point — but the rates of exclusive breastfeeding for six months are lower, and they decline sharply in urban areas where public breastfeeding is most stigmatised.

The consequences for child health are significant. Breastfeeding reduces infant mortality, improves nutritional outcomes, and strengthens immune function. Every barrier to breastfeeding — including social stigma — translates into measurable health costs.

When we make women ashamed to breastfeed, we are not just policing their bodies. We are harming their children.

The Indian Feminist Response

Indian feminists have increasingly taken up breastfeeding as a bodily autonomy issue. The argument is straightforward: a woman's right to feed her child should not be contingent on the comfort of bystanders. The demand is not for special treatment but for the normalisation of a biological function that has been abnormalised by patriarchal culture.

But the conversation is complicated by the fact that breastfeeding is not always freely chosen. In many Indian families, women are pressured to breastfeed — by mothers-in-law, by husbands, by medical professionals — in ways that undermine their autonomy. The feminist response must hold both truths: that breastfeeding should be destigmatised and that the choice to breastfeed must be the woman's.

Feminism does not tell women to breastfeed or not to breastfeed. It tells women that the decision is theirs and that no one has the right to shame them for it.

What Normalisation Would Look Like

Normalising breastfeeding in public requires more than legal protections. It requires a cultural shift — in media, in education, in the built environment. It requires seeing breastfeeding not as a private act that must be tolerated in public but as a public act that requires public support.

In practice, this means breastfeeding rooms in public buildings, protection from harassment in public spaces, and a media landscape that includes breastfeeding as a normal part of life rather than an anomaly.

A society that cannot tolerate a baby eating is a society that has not yet made peace with women's bodies. The breastfeeding question is not about milk. It is about who gets to exist in public.