I AM curious to know how the person who wrote to Miss Conduct (Globe Sunday Magazine, July 13) came to consider the presence of labeled breast milk in an office refrigerator to be a nearly traumatic "exposure." Unless there are safety issues involved, either to the breast milk, the refrigerator, the viewer, or the mother, how can a small container of breast milk in the office refrigerator be a problem? Is cow's milk in a thermos with someone's name on it equally distressing? I imagine not.
It doesn't seem much to ask that our workplaces accommodate the needs of parents of all sorts, but especially those of nursing mothers. Perhaps a compromise, as Miss Conduct suggested, would involve storing the breast milk in an opaque container, appropriately labeled, and tucked into a lunch box which is then placed in the fridge. Nobody should be snooping around in another's lunch, and any "exposure" on the part of the snooper would be due to his or her own curiosity.
TERESA SPILLANE
Jamaica Plain
