If reports from the past year are anything to go by, us mums really do have it hard – if we aren’t being shamed for breastfeeding in public, we are being complained for attending establishments with our children.
Indeed, you can well imagine the frustration of this group of British mums, who were asked to move to the back of a restaurant recently after a male customer complained that they were disturbing him from ‘reading his paper in peace’.
The women are all mothers to infants, and on maternity leave, and a highlight of their weekly routine is meeting for lunch at the Butterley Park Fayre restaurant in Ripley, Derbyshire.
Sharing their story with the Mail Online, they revealed that one day a member of staff enquired as to how long they planned on staying at the restaurant, as a fellow patron had complained about the ‘disturbance’ their presence was causing.
The following week, they were led right past their usual preferred spot at the front of the restaurant and right to the back tables in order to ‘pre-empt any complaints’.
Mum Marie Barron told the publication that she has now written a letter to the owners of the restaurant chain, saying: “We are not loud, hooligan types. We were not there to get drunk. We are working mothers, on maternity leave with seven-month-old babies. We were told that there are men who come in and read the paper and don’t want to be disturbed by women and babies, and it was better if we were out of the way.”
Claiming that the establishment’s manager also told the group they would have to find a soft-play restaurant for their children, she added: “The treatment we received was unacceptable and left us feeling extremely embarrassed as well as discriminated against, and ruined what is otherwise a perfectly lovely place to dine with family and friends.”
Initially, the group were issued an apology along with a £10 voucher, but having gone to head management, the women have been assured that a full investigation will be taking place.
