I made it home in time Friday night to watch ABC’s “What Would You Do?” tackle the issue of breastfeeding in public. The show, if you’ve never seen it, has actors play characters in uncomfortable situations. Then, the cameras roll to catch how bystanders react to the unfolding scene.
In this episode, as a mom in a cafe breastfed her baby, the manager began to berate her. Customers looked on. Some stepped in to come to her defense; others supported the manager. Then the show played out the same scenario with an African-American mom, then a very young mom and then the first mom again, only this time she was drinking a beer.
Kudos to ABC for looking at how people respond to breastfeeding in public, and hopefully enlightening some folks who might not understand the imperative of feeding a hungry baby, wherever and whenever.
But the babies were dolls. I kept waiting for a bystander to comment since it looked obvious to me that these weren’t real babies.