Milking it: inside America’s lactation rooms – in pictures
Some are bright and cosy, others are starkly depressing – these images of rooms used to pump breast milk expose the sometimes grim reality of being a new mum in the US
Thu 28 May 2026 02.00 EDT
Cosmetic Nurse
The US remains the only high-income country in the world that does not offer paid family leave, causing many people to return to work soon after giving birth and contributing to the pervasiveness of pumping in the workplace. Lactation rooms underscore the demands for productivity, along with the cultural expectations to love and care for a child. A new book, Milk Factory, makes the unseen labour inside America’s lactation rooms visible through a series of stark photographs. Milk Factory by Corinne May Botz is available from Saint Lucy books
Musician
Corinne May Botz: ‘My goal with Milk Factory was to create an unconventional portrait of motherhood in the form of a series of photographs, a short film and this book. The act of pumping highlights the ongoing negotiation in motherhood between connection and autonomy, and the ideological contradictions inherent in modern parenthood and public policies’
Farm Worker
‘After my daughter was born, breastfeeding felt like one thing my body did right. Like many Americans, I saw parenthood as a matter of personal and private responsibility. In the blurry survival mode of early motherhood, I didn’t think about the absence of paid family leave. I accepted the fact that in order for my body to maintain the ability to produce breast milk for my daughter I would have to pump when away from her, when she would normally nurse’
Administrative Associate, Opera House
‘This meant during lunch breaks I had to rush from my third-floor classroom where I was teaching, across the street to another building where the school’s government mandated lactation room was located, and get the over-sized key, which the guards often struggled to locate (it is common for guards to be unaware that their building even has a lactation room)’
Building Manager
‘The room was surprisingly large, with conspicuously barren bookshelves, lots of extra chairs, and fake trees. Using a hands-free pumping bra, I simultaneously pumped milk and ate lunch while contentedly video chatting with my mother who was watching my daughter in Brooklyn. One day, I lugged my camera, tripod, and breast pump with me to work and photographed this curious room that I had grown fond of, where I nurtured my daughter while miles away from her. I wanted a record of early motherhood captured on film’
Magazine Creative Director
‘Interested in conceptual portraiture, I knew that I wanted to remove the mother and child from the images in my project, and to photograph post-pump. Throughout the history of art, breastfeeding appears as a symbol of maternal love in paintings mostly made by men. Pumping seemed a more accurate reflection than breastfeeding of what being a parent looks like in a late-capitalist society that values productivity over health and attachments. Symbolically and materially, expressed milk simulates physical and emotional intimacy when mother and child are separated’
Legal Scholar
The legal scholar’s story: ‘When my first daughter was born, I arranged my travel schedule around my need to pump. I woke up at the crack of dawn to pump before heading to my commute. I’d then rush to my destination workplace to pump upon arrival. A few times, because of commuting delays, I had to pump on the train or the bus, but I did it in a very shameful way, covered up with a scarf. I grew frustrated, realising that I wasn’t so much protecting my own modesty by pumping in dedicated spaces, but really protecting others from what I thought they didn’t want to see’
Co-Director, Alabama Prison Birth Project
The co-director’s story: ‘My brother’s girlfriend was shackled to the bed during birth while in prison. I was already a doula and I literally packed up my life and moved closer to the prison. That’s how the Alabama Prison Birth Project was born. The moms are like, “If it can help my baby, sign me up.” A mom typically visits the pumping room every two to three hours. Even though these birthing parents are incarcerated, they are still doing their best to be good moms. Their mistakes don’t have to define them’
Administration Specialist
Corinne May Botz: ‘The act of expressing milk triggers oxytocin, the “bonding” hormone. Breastmilk is an embodied communication between mother and child, and its bioactive components change according to their needs. Pumping mothers are often advised to look at images of their babies or breathe in their scent with clothing to stimulate what is known as let down. In my photographs, images of babies appear in prints and on cellphone screens, a nod to the power of photography and to the constraints on intimacy in society’
Bartender
The bartender’s story: ‘This is where I pump. It’s a disabled bathroom, a coat closet, a spare room. It’s the only place that’s not on camera, and where I have a bit of privacy. This is the best scenario. I’ll be with people almost all day long at the bar, and when I have to take a break to pump, the customers will be like: “Where are you going to go? What do you have to take care of?” And if they’ve been drinking it will be worse. I had a group of guys who asked me, “Are you going to put makeup on?” You get a lot of that in the bar business’
Dairy Farmer
The dairy farmer’s story: ‘There’s no doubt that giving birth and lactating have increased my compassion and understanding of animals. Our farming method, raising the calves with their mothers, is rare. After her first baby, the woman who started this method was like, “I’m not taking the calves away any more.” This method grows the best calf: they’re healthier, they look happy, they get fat and they don’t have problems. I’m grateful for my cab tractor, it has air conditioning and I don’t get field dust in the pump parts’
Adjunct Professor
Corinne May Botz: ‘When I started this project, I thought the book would be published as part of an expanding political vision about what it means to be a woman in public space. Unfortunately, the project feels socially relevant in the United States now for the opposite reason: women are not guaranteed the right to bodily autonomy and abortion; pregnancy-related deaths continue to rise as funding for critical maternal health programmes is dismantled; and the Surgeon General recently warned that parental stress is a significant public health crisis’Explore more on these topics