Enhanced regulations aim to protect a greater number of working parents.
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Last week, expanded protections for nursing mothers, officially known as the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act, or PUMP Act, went into full effect, giving more workers the right to break time and a private space to pump. Congress passed the new legislation in December with large bipartisan support, but it was rolled out in phases to give employers time to adjust to the new requirements.
Building on a 2010 law, which compelled employers to provide breastfeeding accommodations, the PUMP Act was introduced in Congress in 2021. Support grew last summer amid the baby formula shortage and after the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines that support breastfeeding for two years or more. These events kicked off “a healthy debate” around the lack of institutional support for parents, said Sarah Brafman, a national policy director at A Better Balance, a nonprofit advocacy organization that helped draft the legislation. “There was a recognition that we need to be doing more to support pregnant and postpartum people,” she said.
More than 80 percent of babies born in the United States start out receiving some breast milk, but at six months of age, just 56 percent do. Research has shown that working mothers who have adequate time and space to pump are 2.3 times as likely to be exclusively breastfeeding at six months than those without such access.
“We know breastfeeding rates go down dramatically at return to work,” said Dr. Casey Rosen-Carole, director of the breastfeeding and lactation medicine program at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “Part of the reason for that is that if you’re not emptying your breasts regularly, your milk supply goes down. And if your milk supply goes down, gradually, breastfeeding ceases.”
In 2010, Congress included a provision in the Affordable Care Act that required employers to provide nursing mothers with “reasonable break time” and a private space “other than a bathroom” for one year after a child’s birth.
But the rule didn’t apply to workers who were exempt from overtime pay, which, according to the Department of Labor, includes those who have managerial duties; work in certain industries, like transportation or agriculture; or work on commission, among other categories. That meant nearly nine million workers of childbearing age didn’t have the protections to pump at work, Ms. Brafman said. There were also very few legal actions a worker could take if their employer denied them breaks or a space to pump — in a 2016 discrimination case, a federal judge described the provision as “toothless.”
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