Philadelphia is making it easier for nursing parents to find the city’s 26 lactation spaces

The City of Philadelphia wants to make it easier for nursing parents to find a place to pump or breastfeed at work.

The city announced this month that parents can use a new website to find 26 different lactation spaces available in 18 buildings, offering dedicated spaces for city employees and members of the public who breastfeed their children.

A lactation space is a fully private, non-restroom space where nursing parents can express breast milk. In Philadelphia, it must include seating, an electrical outlet, and a surface for the pump, and must be located near running water. Some buildings have dedicated lactation pods or rooms, while others have office spaces or conference rooms that are equipped with the necessary features.

Philadelphia offers eight weeks of paid parental leave, but children can be breastfed for years, creating the need for private spaces to pump at work. Municipal employees are required to be in the office five days a week.

Advocates are celebrating the city’s efforts to increase accessibility for an often under-discussed part of maternal healthcare, but say there is still more to be done.

“You have no idea how excited I am just to have this information mapped out … it really gives us a picture of where we need to go to next. And I know that work is ongoing, and I’m looking forward to the next space,” said Philadelphia City Council Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson, whose legislation to establish city lactation spaces was signed into law in 2023.

For now, most of the city’s lactation spaces outlined on the map are located in Center City, where most of the city’s employees work. This includes municipal buildings that are frequented by the public, like City Hall, Family Court, and the Municipal Services Building.

While they say the initiative is a good start, advocates and experts say there’s an opportunity for the city to expand the availability of lactation spaces outside the city’s core, making them more accessible to members of the public and city workers whose jobs routinely take them across Philadelphia.

Chief Administrative Officer Camille Duchaussee said the city is planning to establish more lactation spaces in other areas of the city, and views the original release of the map as an opportunity to collect more data on usage from city employees who are nursing parents, as well as the needs of the public.

“We know there is room to grow here, and we know there are other spaces and places that need attention,” Duchaussee said Monday. “When it comes to creating an inclusive city, our commitment to it is very real, and so where we can make immediate changes and create immediate accessibility and opportunity. We’re going to do that, and it’s not going to stop us from growing that accessibility and that opportunity.”

The city’s increased attention to lactation spaces comes in response to local and federal legislation.

Former President Joe Biden signed the PUMP Act into law in 2022, requiring employers to provide reasonable break time and a shielded non-restroom space for expressing breast milk. And in December 2023, Philadelphia City Council passed Section 16-132 of the Philadelphia Code, spearheaded by Gilmore Richardson and signed into law by former Mayor Jim Kenney weeks before his final day in office. That bill called for the “creation of lactation spaces for city employees, and where feasible, for members of the public.”

Duchaussee said the city’s newly released map increases accessibility because it’s one thing to have lactation spaces available, but it’s another to let people know where they are.

“It’s great to make the spaces available, but if we don’t create an opportunity and a pathway for folks to know that the spaces are available and kind of self-determined, is it someplace I’m going to be? Is it accessible to me? Does it have the amenities that I need the space to have? Then it’s less effective than we want to be, so this was the right thing to do,” Duchaussee said.

Even though breastfeeding and pumping is a common practice — 84.1% of infants born in the United States in 2021 were breastfed at least once, according to the CDC — it’s still a fairly taboo subject, particularly in the workplace, where women can struggle to find adequate support to pump, advocates say.

Duchaussee said the city has been working on its map of lactation spaces for at least a year, developed by the CAO office and the Office of Innovation and Technology. The individual lactation spaces are maintained through the Department of Public Property and costs are “minimal” so far, according to a CAO spokesperson.

Gilmore Richardson said lactation accessibility has been a priority for her, noting that when she formerly served as a Council staffer, she was able to pump in her private office and store her breast milk in the office refrigerator, something that not all city employees or members of the public are able to do. Last summer, she was “screaming with happiness” to see a lactation room in City Hall for employee and public use, and said she even stopped to take a photo with it.

“This is a step in the right direction,” Gilmore Richardson said of the city’s efforts.

Those looking for a lactation space in a Philadelphia city building can use the newly launched map (available in multiple languages) to find the closest space.

Most of the currently available spaces are in Center City, but Duchaussee said Monday that the city is interested in expanding elsewhere.

Gilmore Richardson said the city’s work to create more suitable places to pump and breastfeed is ongoing, and it’s important that additional spaces “touch every pocket in every corner of the city of Philadelphia,” for city employees and residents navigating municipal government. Her 2023 legislation requires lactation spaces to be included in new or renovated city facilities.

All spaces include in-use signage, seating, a surface, an electrical outlet, and are near running water. But none of the 26 sites offer an in-space pump machine, according to the city’s website, something that Diane Spatz, a professor of perinatal nursing at University of Pennsylvania and a nurse scientist in lactation at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, would like to see.

Spatz, an internationally recognized expert on breastfeeding and human lactation, said the new map is progress and shows that the city cares about new parents embarking on their lactation journeys, but she’s concerned about the potential burden that could fall largely on women if a pump machine or fridge is not provided in all city spaces.

“You now have to have your breast pump, and you have to carry that pump with you.” Spatz said. “You have to carry your bottles, you have to carry your pump attachments, the things that attach to the pump, and then you have to carry something to store your milk in if there’s not a refrigerator provided.”

Nursing parents seeking to use these spaces must also request a time slot for use, according to the map. Spatz questioned the logistics of this process if more than one person needs to use the room at the same time, noting that it’s often a balancing act for nursing parents returning to work or school from maternity leave having to plan their entire day around their pumping schedule.

For improvement, Spatz suggested more flexible scheduling, and a requirement for all rooms to have a hospital-grade pump machine installed.

Duchaussee said “we’re going to take lessons learned from how the spaces are utilized” to inform best practices. She noted that the city is “not there yet” on making the space’s amenities uniform and that the map can allow parents to pivot if a certain time or space is not available. Some buildings have multiple lactations spaces, according to the map.

Duchaussee said that the city’s new website, and conveying to Philadelphians what’s in the lactation spaces, their accessibility, and who to contact is a “gap that we were trying to close, and I think we’re definitely moving in the right direction.”

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said in a statement earlier this month that the map is part of an “ongoing commitment” to increase inclusivity in Philadelphia where accessible and private spaces for nursing parents can be limited.

The city’s new map and creation of lactation spaces are a good start to help ease accessibility problems that have existed for decades, Spatz said. For some parents, those barriers are part of systemic issues and exist in the where, when, and how of expressing breast milk, a process that could be too cumbersome for them to feel motivated to return to work or school.

Currently, there are also lactation spaces at Philadelphia International Airport, Pennsylvania Convention Center, and the Philadelphia Zoo, and on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus.

Parents who use the city’s lactation space finder are encouraged to leave feedback using an online form that can be found on the map.

Gilmore Richardson said the work to increase accessibility for lactation spaces in Philadelphia is far from over.

Last year, she announced an $8 million investment in Black maternal health in the city, and more funds, to be allocated, are included in the fiscal year 2026 budget, which will take effect on July 1, for maternal health support.

“I’m so excited about this work, because … my hashtag that everyone knows me by since 2019 is #MomsGetTheJobDone,” Gilmore Richardson said. “And for me, this is another #MomsGetTheJobDone moment.”