Women’s lives in the 20^th and 21^st centuries; the sociology of gender; history of the body; work and labor; sociological theory; feminist theory; qualitative, ethnographic methods.

My dissertation research on women workers and their mobilization for pay equity appeared in articles and in my 1991 book, Between Feminism and Labor: The Significance of the Comparable Worth Movement (University of California Press). The book received an honorable mention for the C. Wright Mills Book Award in 1992, and in 1996, was published in a Japanese edition by Ochanomizu Press.

Currently, I continue to be interested in breastfeeding as a site of work/family conflict, of class and race boundary-making, and of the disciplining of women’s bodies. (See interview in LA Parents’ Monthly June 2003 and Newsday December 2002 op-ed piece reprinted below.) I also have begun new research on gender, women, and psychopharmaceutical culture. An article on gender in representations of burgeoning antidepressant use in popular magazines is forthcoming (with Nena Stracuzzi), and research on parenting of "special needs" kids in the psychopharmaceutical era is in progress.

Associate Professor, Sociology and Women’s Studies, University of New Hampshire,
2002 – to present.
Assistant Professor, University of New Hampshire, 1996-2002.
Bunting Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University, 1996-97.
Visiting Associate Professor, Sociology and Women’s Studies, Tufts University, 1996.
Assistant Professor, Sociology and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan, 1988-1995.
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1987.
Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Women’s Studies Dissertation Award, 1986.
UC Berkeley, Regents Fellowships, 1985 and 1983.
M.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1980.
B.A. University of California, Los Angeles, 1978. Phi Beta Kappa, UCLA, 1978.

By Linda M. Blum

December 11, 2002 Newsday [reprinted Providence Journal Dec 27, 2002]

A new study showing soaring rates of breast-feeding in the United States is being widely celebrated. The survey of 400,000 new moms in the journal Pediatrics found that 70 percent nursed their newborns before leaving the hospital - the highest percentage in modern history.

This may be good news for American babies, but for American moms there is more to the story. With a scarcity of family-friendly policies, many make infant-feeding choices amid guilt, exhaustion, embarrassment and financial worry.

Most employed mothers in the survey stopped nursing when they returned to work, though health officials urge exclusive breast-feeding for at least six months. Lots of families need a second paycheck, and more than 50 percent of new mothers go right back to work.

Some states now require employers to provide "lactation stations," private spaces where women can pump their breasts during the workday. But the lack of time and privacy at most jobs - not to mention the need to appear professional - makes pumping unappealing to many mothers.

In fact, one researcher found that even where there were good "stations" in place, most new moms did not use them. After all, plugging in your pump while you try not to think about your supervisor or the files piled on your desk is hardly the same as snuggling up to your baby.

Few realize that the United States stands alone as the stingiest country in the industrialized world in supporting breast-feeding mothers. Federal law requires only 12 weeks of unpaid family leave, a luxury many cannot afford. Only California offers more. Signed into law in September, a new law allows for six weeks' paid leave, funded solely by employee contributions with no help from business or government.

This great victory for U.S. working families looks downright miserly by European standards. Even so, the Bush administration is trying to ensure that we go no further: It just put the kibosh on tapping unemployment funds to help new parents, an option some 16 states were developing.

Few also realize that even in sunny, liberal California the sight of a breast-feeding mother is considered unseemly. Although almost half the states, including California, have laws protecting women's rights to breast-feed in public, contemporary cultural attitudes enshrining breasts as sex objects are rigidly resistant to change. (With the demand for breast-implant surgery also soaring, I guess we think breasts are only meant to be sex objects.)

Earlier this year, in an upscale mall near my mother's home in Santa Monica, a woman was asked to stop nursing or leave. But you can see more skin displayed every day at the beach or the 10-plex movie theater nearby.

Those of us who live in such white communities rarely stop to think about what this oversexualization is like for African-American mothers. Even with today's high breast-feeding rates, African-American mothers remain less likely to nurse than white women. Public health officials have explained this gap by seeing black women as either less aware of the health benefits or less motivated to follow health advice. In my research, I have found neither to be true.

Besides what I view as a healthy skepticism to often-exaggerated medical claims, African-American women are already stereotyped in the United States as oversexed and irresponsible. The vulnerability to public exposure and censure they face is a very real danger. Most know that they cannot risk such exposure in the mall, and certainly not at work.

Until we have offered all mothers better options, let's not believe that the United States is such a pro-breast-feeding nation. We are such a wealthy nation, with more super-rich citizens than any other, that I wonder why we can't do better. In Europe, where months of paid leave are common, it is true that taxes are higher. But these nations also tax the rich far more and - what an idea! - make the well-being of mothers a social contribution.

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.