2 hours ago
2
October 7, 2025 — 5:00am
So, it’s 2025 and a Virgin airline staffer felt so uncomfortable about a mother discreetly pumping breast milk in the Melbourne domestic business lounge that they asked her to remove herself to the bathroom and do it there, otherwise leave.
Thirty-seven years ago, when I was planning to move back to New York from Sydney after the birth of my daughter, I was mostly worried about one thing. How was I going to continue breastfeeding in a country where they were squeamish, even prudish, about everything to do with lactating breasts?
I didn’t. I gave in to the prevailing social mores of the city at a time when it was child unfriendly. (You couldn’t even take a stroller onto the subway.)
I never expected Australia would be like this.
Maybe it’s an isolated incident, but it’s still shocking.
Back when I was a young mother, there was a strong push for women to breastfeed their children. Our mothers had been sold the benefits of formula for its convenience.
“Breast was best” was the prevailing wisdom when my daughter was born (and still is). Most mothers of my generation were comfortable nursing in public, mostly because no one dared challenge us.
I don’t doubt it made some people a bit embarrassed, but it was considered normal and natural – and if you had a problem with it, well, you had a problem with motherhood.
These days, thankfully the feelings of women who can’t breastfeed on demand are now also taken into account.
Breast pumps are an essential tool. They give mothers the ability to bottle their milk, allowing fathers to take part in feeding, with bottles filled with the good stuff. I know one young mother who pumped so much quality milk she distributed to grateful friends for their babies.
This should have nothing to do with travel. And shouldn’t need explanation.
But when mother of six-month old twins Dr Elise Turner tried to pump milk under her T-shirt in a quiet corner of the Virgin lounge recently, she was at first asked to do it in the toilet or leave.
Turner had then asked if there was a private space she could use that was more hygienic than the toilet, and a Virgin staff member replied that she could hire a boardroom, which would cost an additional $100.
Outside the lounge, most Australian airports provide mothers’ rooms that are not in the toilet. In the US, all large and medium airports are required by law to provide these rooms.
When Turner dug in her heels and pointed out to a supervisor that it was illegal to deny her this right in the lounge, she was asked to leave and threatened with being reported – and potentially banned from using the lounge again, I imagine.
There are men here and it will make them uncomfortable, was the reason. The lounge needs to be a “pleasant” experience for all.
I wonder if a man did indeed protest? In which case, I would argue that men have something to do with the production of babies and might butt out.
Turner posted an angry video and got an apology from the airline later, but no doubt she’ll carry the sting of the humiliation with her for some time.
I don’t want to add to the pile-on of the supervisor who banished Turner, but the hard stance they took seems completely out of line with current mores.
Perhaps it was the use of the pump (even hidden under a T-shirt) that was the problem? It’s true you don’t see women using breast pumps in public that often. Some people may not even know they exist. But, believe me, if mothers didn’t have to use them, they wouldn’t.
In Turner’s case, she tried to be discreet about using hers, but the supervisor made an issue of it.
We have twin babies in our family and the only way the parents kept organised and sane, enabling both to share the feeding, was with the aid of this device. The newer kinds are even promoted as “wearable.” It’s hardly radical behaviour to use one.
The idea that expressing milk is something unpleasant, something that disturbs the lovely experience of a tranquil airline lounge, seems like a joke if you have ever been in one of those lounges at peak hour. It’s not a church or a mosque, where, incidentally, you’d be allowed to breastfeed.
Perhaps in the end what disturbed the Virgin staff was the notion that business lounges are for businesspeople and that a lactating mother, even one returning from a medical conference in Perth, didn’t qualify as worthy of that respect?
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