So, this morning I read about this Royal Artillery gunner deployed at the front lines in Afghanistan who had a surprise birth. She and the baby boy are fine, even though he was 5 weeks premature and even though the place where she was deployed had been attacked a few days before.
It reminds me of debating the whole concept of women in the military 20 some years ago. The older men I worked with would get themselves stirred up into quite a lather about it. Women would distract the men, they said. Men could be forced to work in tanks with a menstruating female: abomination! I wish I’d thought at the time to bring up the possibility that men in the trenches might have to cope with a comrade whose water just broke, or a safety drill for when your pilot reaches a bad patch of labor pains.
Maybe this isn’t as funny to you as it is to me, but I can’t stop chuckling.
Breastfeeding bombers!! Where will it all end?
I’m happy that I’ve lived long enough that I got to win the argument, and I’m thrilled that my daughters will be working in this time.
It’s weird to me that when you google around for articles on women and employment in this country, the tonal emphasis is competitive: men making more, women having more total jobs, dominating this and gaps of that. Most of these authors are women, too.
What they miss is the shift in the culture of workplaces that are balanced between men and women. In my experience it is nothing but a good thing for the people and the company as a whole, even if the occasional baby pops out during the workday.
askyermom 
Interesting piece by Roxanne Gay: http://therumpus.net/2012/10/how-we-all-lose/
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