The breast is over

This month, the Portuguese government sounded the alarm: mothers are breastfeeding their children just to qualify for reduced working hours. Finally. It's about time someone addressed this scourge mothers impose on our economy.

It's the Minister of Labor, Solidarity, and Social Security who guarantees it: there are "many" abusive practices. She doesn't know how many, as there's no data. But they are "many." According to her, there are those who breastfeed their children until "primary school," just imagine! We assume someone told her. Or perhaps it was the minister herself who tracked down some mother caught red-handed, with her child's big boy in her arms, who opened up about this crime that so plagues the country.

Therefore, action is needed. The government wants to act. As a consequence of the alleged abuses, its labor reform proposes limiting the right to reduced hours for breastfeeding up to two years. It also requires the presentation of a medical certificate every six months. Of all the necessary reforms to encourage birth rates and support families, they decided on this. It's a case of saying: "no more breastfeeding." As inelegant as the expression may be, and I don't like to repeat it, it's becoming a trademark of this government.

The current government has focused on cultivating the image of someone who arrived to bring order. It's a popular recipe, the idea of bringing order to the chaos. Now, since the previous government was spot-on with its public finances, perceptions abound: culture wars, the illusion of "wide-open doors" in immigration, and these little tidbits. Logos and citizenship lessons. There are plenty of topics where the government can boast of ending abuses without having to answer to the facts. This week, it was the mothers' turn. Within days, another group of criminals will emerge, demanding a heavy hand.

The minister's remarks have been criticized in various ways: from fathers' rights associations to the Order of Physicians, from opposition parties to the published press. They say the government disregards scientific evidence, places mothers in an undignified position, and fails to address the facts. But what's the surprise?

Just look around to realize that the facts are not in fashion. The numbers also deny that there is any relationship between immigration and crime, for example. Or they deny that there is a structural abuse of the right to RSI (whose average value, by the way, is €155.6 per month). Yet we continue to hear that crime increases because of "open doors" or that "they" receive RSI, "but then have their Mercedes parked outside." The nonsense that mothers are abusing their right to breastfeed is of the same ilk. Well, bring on the minister to bring these violators to order.

The numbers we know are these: only one in five Portuguese children breastfeeds for up to six months. After six months, that number, already low, plummets—and by two years, it's close to zero. In a country with one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, imagine the number of people we're talking about in this alleged abuse, breastfeeding their children until they're six.

We should be creating social conditions to encourage more children in Portugal. Building a country for families. Expanding parental leave and rights with financial incentives. Access to daycare and better schools. Flexibility and job protection. Gender equality. Housing and combating precariousness. But the government prefers to call it reform rather than cuts in rights.

What justifies the intention to revoke a father's right—already enshrined in law—to three days of gestational mourning in the event of an involuntary termination of pregnancy? What explains this setback and this attack on families?

I'll give the minister's thesis a chance anyway. Woe betide me, who still has this habit of working with facts. I'll go out into the street, in a trench coat and notebook, determined to see with my own eyes these mothers breastfeeding their grown children. Well, let's do it. Maybe I'll get by at the University Campus. With luck, I'll find young breastfeeding women who can enlighten me while they wait for the results of their applications.

The texts in this section reflect the authors' personal opinions. They do not represent VISÃO nor reflect its editorial position.