Original artwork by Ashley Hoth – see more on Instagram @ashleyhoth_art.
I have an opinion: Babies are great. However, they’re also much, much better when they finally stop being babies. I’m the mom of three kids who are currently 10, 15 and 17. Do you know one part of early parenthood that I do not miss at all? Taking care of babies at church! I didn’t realize until years after I was done breastfeeding that our accommodations for nursing mothers are terrible. We claim to value motherhood and women above all else, but we treat them like an afterthought in so many ways. Specifically in this post, I want to talk about Mother’s rooms.
The LDS church has a large demographic of young families, which means we have a lot of mothers and young babies. Young fathers are frequently absent because they have more important duties than helping with their own children, like sitting on the stand and being in charge of stuff.
I experienced frequent Sunday meetings without my own husband during the early years of parenthood because his military and civilian careers frequently took him away on weekends. Not only did he have monthly military drills and annual trainings, he also spent multiple years deployed to the Middle East. Church was me, on my own, with small children and a baby many times.
I nursed each of my three babies for twelve months. I almost always made the trek to the mother’s room out of concern for the comfort of those around me over concern for my own well-being. My conservative Utah county ward was highly disapproving of moms nursing in the chapel, often citing concerns that we were exacerbating pornography problems for the men and boys in the ward – even if the mother was well covered with a blanket (because “boys still know what’s underneath it”) as they passed the sacrament tray to her. It’s a weird double standard when those exact same boys then played shirtless basketball in the exact same cultural hall overflow a few days later. Why is it perfectly acceptable for boys or men whose nipples serve zero function whatsoever to be totally naked from the waist up in the church building, while a mother feeding her baby there is considered obscene?
Yet for now, I want to focus simply on the mother’s rooms where women are required to feed their hungry babies.
According to the internet, these are the most basic requirements of a breastfeeding/pumping room for nursing moms in an office space:
–Comfortable seating
-Table
-Outlet to connect electric breast pump
-Sink for cleaning nursing equipment
-Lockable door
-Contact information in case there’s a problem
-Hygienic space – cleaned daily
I think in a church that values women and mothers so highly we’d not just reach those basic requirements, but far exceed them. Unfortunately, no. We kind of suck, actually. (Pun intended.)
If women must leave the most sacred meeting of their week to feed their babies, shouldn’t that room be an extension of the sanctuary the chapel is designed to be? Shouldn’t mothers of large families, who will spend years leaving meetings to go to this specific room, expect a beautiful and relaxing space to continue their worship in while caring for their infant?
I wanted to show what a typical mother’s room looks like in a church building in 2024, but it was very hard to find images online anywhere. (Apparently, our mother’s rooms are not worth bragging about on the internet.) So after dropping my kids at school one morning, I headed on a whim to the local stake center and made this video of myself touring a problematic mother’s room:
You can watch the video to see what problems I encountered on this visit, which included:
–A broken chair
-Dirty and stained fabric on the chairs
-Very small and cramped
-Broken (and very smelly) trash bin
-Not enough chairs, so some women will inevitably sit on the floor to nurse
-No lock on the door for privacy, despite it opening directly into the main lobby outside the chapel
-No footrests to avoid aching backs while nursing
-Diaper changing table directly next to the head of a nursing moms
–Harsh overhead lighting
-Broken ceiling panels
Other frequent complaints from women include:
-Too hot or too cold
-Moms have to bring in their other small children, who are bored and noisy
-Dirty with crumbs and crushed snacks on the floor
-Trashes aren’t emptied regularly
-No supplies for moms and babies
-The sound doesn’t work to hear the meeting
Here is what some mother’s rooms look like at other church buildings in 2024:
After brainstorming for a few days (and getting ideas from other church websites), here are what I think our mother’s rooms should all have:
- Complimentary diapers, wipes and diaper rash cream in a cabinet (along with a reminder to preferably change and dispose of the baby’s diapers in a restroom, not the nursing room). (At the very least, provide a diaper genie or some kind of odor locking technology like most of us have in our own homes with infants. Just do something to keep the room from smelling like poop all the time!)
- A mini fridge with cold bottled water. Nursing moms get so thirsty.
- Blankets to wrap yourself or your baby in if it’s cold (washed weekly).
- Coloring books and crayons for the older siblings of kids (like mine) without a dad there during church meetings to help out.
- A box of soft tissues! Usually there are just paper towels which is awful for blowing your nose or wiping your baby’s face.
- Beautiful decor. Paint the walls, hang pretty art, put up drapery, place flowers on the table, pick out a pretty rug and a nice comfortable couch. Nursing can be painful and stressful with brand new babies, so doing it away from home should be as relaxing as possible.
- Put chocolates and snacks in a bowl for exhausted moms to help themselves to.
- Top of the line, comfortable nursing chairs AND a footrest or ottoman for each one. There were times I sat cross legged on the floor in a dress to feed my baby because there were two chairs – and one was broken, and the other being used by another mom – and sitting on the hard floor was more comfortable than the leaning chair that I felt I was constantly on the verge of being dumped out of. (Sidenote: all of this is so much easier in slacks than a dress. Nursing moms can wear pants to church.)
- Provide plumbing and a sink so women can clean up spills and their clothing if necessary.
- Hang a full-length mirror on the wall so we can readjust ourselves properly before walking back out into the busy halls of the church.
- Bring in a table where we can set our bags and supplies down, rather than on the floor.
- Have blackout curtains and dimmable lights, to help rock an infant or toddler to sleep when church interferes with nap time. Replace the glaring fluorescent lights with dimmable lamps.
- Sanitizing wipes to clean off surfaces, toys and changing pads to cut down on the spread of illness during flu season.
- Put in a TV screen that plays a live feed of the meetings the women are missing. There’s usually been a cackling broken speaker that’s hard to understand at most buildings I’ve nursed in. How nice would it be to be able to see the speaker AND hear them, too?
- Plug in air fresheners.
- Put a sign on the wall for who to contact if there is an issue with the mother’s room. Why are chairs endlessly broken? Probably because no one knows who to tell or what to do to get it replaced with a new one. Men are the ones with access to the money and budgets, and they’ll never step into that room.
- An electrical outlet to plug in breast pumps. Some women exclusively pump and need a space to do so even during church.
- A crib to lie a baby in when they nap so a mom’s arms can have a rest.
- Boppy (nursing) pillows – covers washed weekly.
- Coat racks to hang up extra clothing and diaper bags, rather than putting them on the floor.
- A white noise machine to turn on to help calm cranky babies to sleep.
- An adjustable thermostat! Sometimes these rooms get excessively warm or cold, depending on the season.
- Finally, we need a bigger room. There has to be space for more than two chairs, because there are almost always more than two nursing women at any typical church building on any typical Sunday. There also needs to be an area for changing diapers that is separated from the nursing babies. A tiny walk-in closet sized space is not adequate.
I found some recent videos online of an LDS mom who redid her mother’s room to better fit the needs of moms and babies. She did awesome, but unfortunately, she had to get the bishop’s approval to do any of these improvements – which included spending her own money to purchase and refinish a changing table for the room. (Prior to her upgrade, you’ll see that mothers were changing their babies on the floor.) She’s still waiting to hear back on approval to hang artwork on the walls. I know this is just how it currently works, but I find it frustrating that as women we have to ask our male leaders for permission to hang something on the walls of our female-only spaces.
All of these questions and frustrations aside, this TikTok mom is doing great work. Her first video shows her kneeling on the ground to change her baby and wanting to make improvements for herself and other moms, and the second shows the upgrades she’s been approved so far to do.
I feel like we pay lip service to motherhood all the time, but typically fail to back any of that up with substantive help with the very real physical demands on a woman’s body after giving birth to a child. When the chairs in the high council room are significantly nicer than the chairs the new moms feed their babies on, we have a problem with our priorities. Until changes are made, I think all bishoprics should hold their weekly Sunday meetings in the mother’s room after a full block of meetings next to a trash can full of diapers. Two of them can sit in the old, spit-up covered and possibly broken chairs, and the others can sit cross legged on the floor, trying to remain modest while balancing their very important paperwork on their laps.
Maybe then we’d see an improvement!
Here are a couple short videos of non-LDS churches and their nursing rooms (for inspiration!):
(After completing this blog post a couple months ago, I came across a poignant story from a nursing mom (Ashley, the artist who sketched the main image for this post) at stake conference whose husband unlocked the high council room for her to nurse in. At my request she submitted her story and we published it as a guest post here: Mothers and Infants are Uncomfortable at Church: A Call for Help – Exponent II)
23 Responses
This is so spot on. It’s been over a decade since I was a nursing mom, but I still remember how hard it was to take nursing babies to church.
I’ve been on a small quest of my own to redecorate the Mother’s Room in my current church building. It started a few years ago when I was helping clean the church. I was already in a bad mood because HELLO we need janitors. Then I walked into the Mother’s room and saw that had a door to the boiler room. That door literally had a sign that said, “Mechanical Equipment” on it. That was the only thing to look at in the room. I was like, “Great, let’s make all the nursing mothers think they are mechanical equipment.”
I was so ticked off I went to DI and bought a picture and hung it up with those 3M command strips. I didn’t bother asking for permission. Our building is currently shared by 4 wards. I figured if anyone had a problem with pictures in the mothers room they would have to try to figure out who did it. And since we can barely coordinate youth activity night schedules I knew they’d never be able track down the fact that no one authorized redecorating the mothers room.
So now every time I’m assigned to clean the church I also bring another decoration for the mothers room. This time it was two pictures and a magazine rack that my work no longer needed. I stocked the magazine rack with some church magazines but also threw in a few copies of Better Homes and Gardens for the moms and some old copies of Train Magazine for anyone with a train obsessed toddler.
I check on the room every so often and nothing has been taken down yet.
Your article makes me wonder though, what if maintaining the mothers room was my actual calling? How much better could I make the room if I had support and a budge. I’d love to make sure it was fully stocked with diaper supplies, and nice things for moms.
If only.
I love that you’re doing this! Also – I don’t think anyone is ever going to take down your stuff because all the men in charge stay out of that room. So, for the same reason that the broken clocks/chairs/rugs/etc never get fixed and the garbage never gets emptied, the stuff you put in will probably be just fine.
I’ve read online about facilities managers coming in and tearing out everything that’s not officially church approved and provided from mother’s rooms. I’m really interested why some get removed immediately and others remain. (Maybe because some facility matters can follow the spirit of the law better?) I’m glad you did all of that! I was alsosurprised to find a piece of framed art on the wall on the video I made in this post. That’s really rare, so there must be a renegade art hanger nearby me as well.
I nursed all my babies in the women’s rest room, sitting on a toilet because there was nothing else, and in the 1970s nursing mothers had zero rights to nurse in public. When we lived in Berlin, long before the Wall came down, we had to take a one and a half hour subway ride to get to the English speaking branch, I would have to nurse my newborn who was on about a 2 hour schedule, and was a very slow nurser. Then it was time to go home, eat, turn around and come back for Sacrament meeting, where I spent 3/4 the meeting in the restroom on a toilet nursing the baby. I quit trying to nurse after 3 months because it was just too difficult with the lack of any consideration for nursing mothers. For the second child, choices were our car in the parking lot in subzero Wyoming, or the women’s restroom sitting on a toilet. Third child, at least I could go out to the car most of the time. But why am I even trying to go to church, just to miss most of the meetings sitting on a toilet or out in my car? At least now, most building have something better that a toilet stall, but I do understand there is still a long ways to go, so keep complaining when facilities aren’t adequate. See, my generation was raised to be good girls and never complain. Big mistake! Do not make the mistake of your grandmothers. Complain, gripe, whine, and if they don’t hear you, stay home and nurse your babies where it is comfortable. Nice girls end up feeding babies in rooms that suck….shitty rooms that suck.
I only breastfed my 2nd for about 7 months – and breastfeeding at church was one of the reasons it was only 7 months.
For me, I still “smart” over the time we had President Nelson and other general authorities in our area. They decided to host a Priesthood leadership meeting and a women’s meeting at the same in our stake. Our leadership was mostly staffed by husband-and-wife teams who also had children. Like the branch president, a counselor, and the executive secretary had young children, and the branch president and counselors’ wives were in leadership positions as well.
There was no family support for child care at the stake level.
I talked to the local leadership to see if there was a grass-roots endeavor being put together and got crickets.
I offered to host child care if there were other volunteers and if we could do so at the church building. I got weird looks and crickets. The other moms were pretty much “out-sourcing their children” to various friends’ houses.
Finally, I decided I would tend to my girls at the meeting – bring electronics for my oldest and deal. It actually became academic as one of my kids got the stomach flu that morning.
When I was jumping through these hoops, I was thinking how easy it would be to talk to the stakes about “child care” for their leadership because this situation can’t be that rare and can be planned for.
“I got weird looks and crickets.”
That’s the result women have come to expect whenever we ask for just about anything in this church. A lot of women don’t even bother to ask anymore – or it doesn’t even occur to them to ask in the first place – because we know exactly what we’ll get if we do. Weird looks and crickets.
“boys still know what’s underneath it”
hahahaha! That’s the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard and I want to say I’m surprised someone made it, but also – I can totally believe that someone made that argument.
The thing that’s so stupid about it is we could say the exact same argument about shirts – “can’t go out in public in a shirt because boys still know what’s underneath it!” With that kind of argument about a covered up mother nursing, women (whether nursing or not) should never go in public because someone might think about what they look like naked. It’s so ludicrous!
This is so infuriating, and I’ve always been disappointed by our mother’s rooms. (I actually wish they would be called lactation rooms to be more specific and inclusive of transgender, milk donors, and other folks who might need it but don’t identify as mothers – but that’s a whole separate issue.) In an ideal world, breasts feeding babies wouldn’t be sexualized and we could normalize public feeding as many cultures do (for example, there was no mother’s room in my church building in Nairobi, Kenya but public breastfeeding is more accepted there). But there should also be those basic amenities for those who want or need privacy, and the examples from other churches you shared gave me holy envy. If only we had that!
I stopped always using the mother’s room to nurse during stake conference when there were about eight women crammed into the mother’s room (two rocking chairs and two folding). I realized I nursed my baby everywhere else in public but felt like I was supposed to use the mother’s room at church because it was there.
I really appreciated having the mother’s room space when I was first figuring out how to nurse. It was helpful to learn from other moms and to see that nursing didn’t remain toe-curlingly painful. Once I was comfortable nursing in public though, what I really wanted was a private “parent’s room” where I could take a baby that NEEDS to go down for a nap and not have to worry about another mom coming in with her baby and a couple kids. A closet with a single rocking chair, dim lights, and a lock that shows that the room is occupied would have been great. My vote would be to have both options available: one or two private rooms and a lactation lounge.
But yes, broken stained chairs, freezing cold stinky room that you have to access through a bathroom has been my experience also.
I remember years ago walking into the Mother’s Room to feed my baby and it constantly smelling like poop. I realized that the trash can was always overflowing with diapers. The deacons that were in charge of going room to room to collect the trash at the end of church never came into the Mother’s Room to empty the trash can. They just skipped past the room entirely. I ran down and told the deacons to circle back and make sure to get the trash in the Mother’s Room. They were so embarrassed to go inside- I just couldn’t believe it.
Those rooms constantly smell bad, and they aren’t easy to just air out, either. There’s got to be a better solution (a diaper genie, better training on cleaning process, a separate area from the nursing room for diapers, etc…).
An air purifier (or two) would work wonders for the mother’s room. I have a Germ Guardian in my work office that also comes with a HEPA filter and UVC, and it’s a godsend. It eliminates bad odors and all air pollutants, helps with allergies and dust sensitivities, and keeps my office fresh and clean. Mothers and their babies deserve to have clean air!
I’m not a mother, but this post made me seethe. It’s truly embarrassing how much the church pedastalizes motherhood and gives mothers so much lip service yet can’t provide them with a decent lounge/nursing area. It’s also disgusting how so many mother’s rooms in church buildings are connected to the bathroom, which is also rarely, if ever, properly sanitized and where you can hear everyone’s business! It’s awful!
This article also explains why my sister, cousins, and friends of mine who are mothers either nursed their babies in the chapel or foyer a nursing cover, or stayed home from church while breastfeeding. I honestly don’t blame them.
That said, I don’t think mothers should have to use a nursing cover when feeding their own children, either. It’s absolutely ridiculous how people get so uppity about how women have been feeding their children since the world began (and we know how much men in the church love to shove “biology” down women’s throats and use it as a crutch to have unrealistic standards when it comes to women’s fitness and attractiveness levels), but don’t bat an eye at the boys and men running around shirtless while playing sports in the cultural hall or at scout camp (and even at youth conferences while the girls have to cover their shoulders and thighs the entire time, even while swimming), and aren’t at all concerned about boys and men coming across various media (print advertising, movies, TV shows, YouTube/internet, etc.) showing practically naked women flitting across the screen the whole time.
The whole thing is backwards. The church coddles boys and men at the expense of girls and women – ESPECIALLY those who are mothers.
When my babies were nursing, the nursing room was the old shower area in the bathroom of an old stake center – tiled walls and all, the standard 2 chairs and of course windowless. The next building (now about 25 years old) was a small windowless room (and still is). These buildings had signs up that you had to take your soiled diapers with you, or take them out to the dumpster – no diaper pails allowed. I found it interesting you suggest blackening curtains when I thought you were lucky to have a window! It’s all in one’s perspective.
When I was growing up, there was a “nursery” at the back corner of the chapel which was raised and had glass windows and sheer drapes. It had a single toilet bathroom and a speaker that broadcast the meeting. You could go in there with your baby, or fussy children and still listen and even look through the windows. Of course, that room was converted and taken away…
Your ideas are wonderfully ideal, though many not practical in the LDS world. Snacks in the nursing room would be raided by kids and teens constantly, not vacuumed up and invite pests (nursery has to lock up theirs). Unless there is existing plumbing, there is no way they’re going to add that. The church spends the most minimal possible, and only when forced, for any improvements. The thermostat – again, the building is on zones and that would be a major retrofit that won’t happen. The TV idea is awesome, but there are wards that won’t broadcast Zoom anymore, and there are wards that don’t have members with the skills to be able to set that up every week. Then of course we come to cleaning. IF there were a professional janitorial staff with adequate supplies, perhaps proper cleaning would happen (although I’ve never seen a washing machine at any building, so I’m not sure how linens are going to be washed). But the church doesn’t provide that and that room will always stink, and never be properly cleaned or sanitized.
The images your shared of other groups were so uplifting and really put the LDS church to shame – holy envy indeed! For an organization that constantly touts the family, their actions do not mirror their words especially when it comes to anything female related.
This is where a lot of women are divided. Some women in our building advocated for no more changing babies in the nursing room–so they sawed down the table and put another chair in there, and installed a changing table in the bathroom (none for the men’s room mysteriously, my husband used counterspace where no changing table was provided for the men and my child fell on the floor and got badly hurt–I was crushed. So I tearfully took up all diaper duty when at church because they didn’t make it safe for men to do it.). My child was always squirming to be either changed or use the toilet when I nursed (we practiced elimination communication)–so it was inconvenient to pack up and go over there. I like it where there’s access to a little room with a toilet, but not in the room because that sprays unsanitary stuff everywhere and is loud. I agree with a lot of these but not all of the suggestions because some of them would be problematic for some women. Church, if you’re listening, send out a survey please.
I love that you (and others!) are calling attention to this! I’ve been in okay ones and yucky ones. I have added things in there from time to time and it’s interesting to me that I feel like I am breaking rules when I do that! But some things you just don’t need permission for but the church really ought to foot the bill for bigger improvements.
Also changing stations in the men’s restrooms
Yep. The equal of motherhood is not the priesthood. It’s fatherhood. Our churches could have just a parents’ room with maybe some private spaces for nursing moms.
If motherhood is the “highest, holiest calling” in this church, then our mother’s rooms should be the most well-looked after room in the building. It should at least look and smell as nice as that one hallway in the Church Administration building where they spent $13,000 of Relief Society funds on a rug…
As it is, I have never been in a mother’s room in any LDS church building that wasn’t too small, didn’t have broken, stained chairs, or that didn’t smell like dirty diapers.
At this point, the mothers are so exhausted and demoralized that they don’t even bother asking for improvements. We women know from experience that, most likely, the request will just be brushed off by the bishop or stake president. If we do get noticed, the request may be denied because it might cost the church a few pennies. If we get noticed and the request is “passed on,” it will likely be forgotten long before it reaches the ears of the maintenance man. If they do get improvements approved, the moms are likely to have to do all the work at their own cost to provide those improvements, and the space will not be maintained properly by any effort of the church leadership.
This is why all their pedestalizing and gushing about how wonderful we are rings so hollow. We know darn good and well we’re an afterthought. The men in charge of this church are all about retaining great moms in the church and reaping all the benefits we provide for free – as long as they don’t have to see, hear, smell, witness, or experience any of the logistics, discomfort, bodily fluids, or participate in (or even look at) ANY of the work of what motherhood actually entails.
This is also especially true of periods, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding while wearing garments – they don’t want to hear about our body fluids and discomfort when it comes to that topic.
This was a hard one for me to comprehend. The lessons we had at church say to “mourn with those that mourn” – and that is right up there with the baptismal covenant (for both men and women).
“True Mourning” usually requires dealing with bodily fluids – just ask any parent of a toddler or a teenager. It is sitting with a person in grief – not just at the bedside of a dying loved one (which includes fluids) or at a funeral.
Maybe it’s cultural conditioning for our men not to deal with their own tears (choosing anger instead) – so they have a harder time accessing emotional space/empathy for mourning with others (and fulfilling that covenant).
The other problem with a mother’s room is that they don’t have a father’s room. Men can get up and go feed a baby with a bottle in a separate (but equal) room.
Speaking of rooms for women and children…does anyone know what’s in the youth center of the temple? They never let anyone see in on tours, but they make sure to have everyone sees the dressing room for women where women are supposed to strip in front of other girls (are they unfamiliar with the long lines in women’s locker rooms at schools for the bathroom stalls, girls don’t like to get undressed in front of others?). I refused to do that and was told to leave, this room was for girls who wanted to have others dress them, so I went to a locker. I also specifically settled for a frumpy straight wedding dress with long sleeves and a high neckline so I could get married in a dress of my choosing without needing to wear something on top, only to be told by the matron that she doubted I had a dress that would work and refused to see it and she handed me something to put on top, thankfully another worker stepped in and said this would work. The matron looked at it and saw literally only 3 swirls and said it was too elaborate. It took a couple more temple workers to talk her out of it, she was clearly on a power trip, “I always have girls wear these no matter what.” Anyway, that part was a little bit of a tangent but I was sad that I never got to use the room that men actually made sure women would like the look of. As far as the youth center, I feel bad that women just have to imagine what it will be like when their babies are taken from their arms and put in that room, that sounds distressing. The brides’ room would make a great room where women could take care of their littles as they got ready for their sealing instead of being told to hand them off. And with the church being open to disabled unbaptised adults witnessing sealings (and anyone in the community viewing the temple robes at funerals), maybe one of these days, at least for some ordinances we could nurse the babies in the temple? My son was devastated when I did ordinances as a baby, the babysitter said all he’d so was cry and not drink from the bottle–all 4 hours! If not, and let’s say that unusual dressing room in the temple is just to convince women to get married (and skipping the youth center is to avoid us wanting to adopt babies or getting married civily), then wouldn’t an awesome nursing room at church do just as good of a job (and it does double duty in convincing women to have children too)? I’m not trying to make people feel unsatisfied with the church, and I’m happy to defend the church as simply having an oversight or perhaps that bad branch hasn’t been removed and grafted in with something better, and that will happen someday. I would totally fill in a survey if the church gave me the chance.
Leaders that attend stake and ward council can report issues in the FIR(facility issue reporting)app. I don’t think many sisters are aware that they have access. When I served as stake RS pres, I reported issues constantly as I visited multiple buildings. They did fix the issues I reported in the nursing mother’s lounges. The chairs/carpet should be cleaned and sanitized regularly. I hate that changing tables are often in the same room and that’s there’s no sink. Opening the high council room for nursing mother’s is a great idea. We don’t have a stake center in my stake, so no comfy high council chairs.