The results section begins by providing an overview of the data collected.
The data is then presented in relation to themes arising from individual locations. A more theoretical paper could have been written, but it was felt that dividing the data into these themes would allow for the greatest potential impact from those designing public spaces. Theoretical concepts will be returned to within the discussion.
Summary of data
Data were collected from 14 locations in and around Cardiff, as well as a second train station in Bristol (total n = 15). The majority of these locations could be further sub-divided, as is shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Data collection locations
Category
|
Location
|
Sub-locations
|
Transport: vehicles (n = 4)
|
Taxi
|
-
|
Train (mainline, Swansea – London)
|
Carriage; Toilets
|
Bus (City centre to University Hospital of Wales)
|
Bus Stops; Bus (Cardiff Bus Company)
|
Aeroplane (Flybe, economy)
|
Cabin; Toilets
|
Transport: hubs (n = 3)
|
Cardiff Railway Station
|
Back entrance; Parent & Baby Room (not found); Toilets; Café; Platforms (including benches); Waiting room; Front entrance
|
Bristol Parkway Railway Station
|
Platform; Waiting room
|
Cardiff International Airport
|
Check in area; Special Assistance area (within check in area); Security; Departure area including: Departure lounge, Costa coffee, Ritazza café/bar, Toilets, Baby changing room, Duty free shops, Departure gate
|
High Streets: outside of city centre (n = 3)
|
Cathays (student area)
|
Outside library, Supermarket (no toilets), Outside shops
|
Whitchurch (middle class area)
|
Outside shops
|
Splott (working class area)
|
Outside shops, Supermarket (no toilets)
|
High street: main city centre (n = 1)
|
Queens Street, The Hayes
|
Benches, Outside shops
|
Cafés (n = 2)
|
Whitchurch (middle class area)
|
Outside seating, Downstairs, Upstairs, Toilets
|
Splott (working class area)
|
Inside seating, Toilets
|
Shopping Centre: city centre (n = 1)
|
Queens Arcade; St David’s Centre, St David’s 2 (interconnected)
|
Benches (multiple locations), Outside shops (including two underwear shops), Toilets, Baby changing, Infant feeding room, Family toilets (with 2 toilets per cubicle), elevators (with sexualised underwear advertising)
|
Department store (n = 1)
|
John Lewis
|
Shop floor, Toilets, Mother and Baby area, Café (noted as a safe place to BF on Feed Finder app)
|
Thematic analysis
Within the analysis, five key areas are described: public transport, urban shopping centres, high streets, mother & baby rooms, toilets and cafes. Within each of these, the common overarching theme of an available and appropriate seat will be provided.
Public transport: seats on planes, trains and automobiles
For passengers with tickets, places to sit were available at transport hubs or on public transport. Railway station waiting rooms were not particularly good quality in terms of comfort or practicality for those travelling with infants. Furthermore, they seemed to be governed by social norms requiring a certain kind of behaviour, as I summed up in my notes:
The waiting room is rather small, drafty…and physically not ideal for breastfeeding. Four rows of cold metal seats are provided, each facing one other row. The arm rests on each individual chair are not well positioned for breastfeeding, and they may be shared with an adjacent stranger…Most people in the room are doing “civil inattention”. Lots are using smart phones and staring at the screen, one older couple are chatting quietly, others reading books/a newspaper. Although the announcements are loud in the room, the people are quiet, like a library. It feels as if there is an unspoken rule to be “quiet and considerate.”(Fieldnotes: Cardiff Railway Station Waiting Room: platform 1).
At Cardiff International Airport, the small number of seats in the check in area, were similarly robust, cold, metal and including arm rests. It was not possible to use a seat provided and check in simultaneously, because of this several passengers in the check in queues were sat on their luggage or the floor, which was uncarpeted and cold. One contrasting handful of more comfortable, vinyl covered padded seating in the arrival hall was marked for passengers requiring “special assistance”. However, these needed to be booked with the airline in advance, and their use was policed by a member of staff sat in a cubicle beside the seats. This type of vinyl covered padded metal seats was available in large numbers in the departure lounge, allowing plenty of vacant seats between passengers. Alongside these, “two ‘statement’ benches (with no backs) shaped like a child’s interpretation of a snake (a wiggly curved line)” were situated outside of the toilets, aiming to provide seating that was used in a more short-term way.
The quality of seats on the transport itself was variable. I found the bus seats to be itchy through denim jeans, and the seats on the plane and train to be more comfortable, but narrow:
With my arms against my sides I am pressed into the wall of the train but I take over about 5-10cm of the neighbouring chair. It would be very difficult to breastfeed with a stranger next to you… (Fieldnotes: train Cardiff – Bristol)
Within the taxi, the seating was comfortable and spacious. However, I was aware of the legislation regarding babies not being in arms, and I also felt the gaze of the male taxi driver in the rear view mirror as we were having a conversation on the journey.
Shopping centres and department stores: highly visible seating
In both the complex of shopping centres and the department store, some indoor seating was provided without charge to those who felt comfortable or able to enter those semi-private spaces. Within the complex of three shopping centres, there were a range of different types of seat. First, in the older part of the centre, wooden benches, some divided into individual seats by metal arms, were situated in the middle of the walkways between shops. These were placed in rows of two, which were back-to-back. I noted: “very busy (pedestrian traffic); people walking past have to get very close to those seated…I sensed that for those who feel vulnerable…the combination of height difference and proximity could be intimidating”.
In the new area of the shopping centre (St David’s 2), I noted that alongside flat wooden benches with very low backs and metal arm rests downstairs, “some comfier, padded vinyl-covered benches” were provided in the upstairs atrium, although these did not have backs available to rest against. Attempts had been made to put these away from the main footfall, and far fewer people walked past me as I sat on these benches. However, the more open space in the upstairs of the shopping centre, to allow for multiple sets of escalators, aided by all “walls” being made of clear glass, meant that I felt more “exposed” to public scrutiny whilst sitting there.
High streets: uncomfortable seats
This was the only type of completely free to access seating open to everybody in the study; none of it felt like a facilitator to infant feeding. First, considering the three high streets outside of the city centre, there was a lack of seating available. Within the working class high street, there was no seating available. This was a surprise, as it had contained a large quantity of benches (more than 10) when I lived there from 2012–2016, which were used heavily. Likewise, in the student area high street, there was no seating, although slightly beyond the high street, there was a small garden outside a library with benches and concrete individual seats The middle class high street had wide pavements and plenty of space, compared to the student area but only three rotten wooden benches with no arm rests.
Within the city centre, the wooden benches on Queen Street were divided into individual seats using metal arm rests; these have been identified as poor quality in relation to comfort by Rate This Bench [46]. Alongside these utilitarian anti-homeless benches, in The Hayes area of the city centre, there was a range of outdoor seating available; cold black stone cuboids, aiming to seat two people and long curved black stone backless benches, similar in shape to the curved benches within the departure lounge of Cardiff International Airport.
By far the most regular form of seating around the city which was accessible to all was in the form of bus stops. However, these seemed designed to prevent comfort and stability, and would not easily allow for breastfeeding:
The bus stops have small rounded (convex) red plastic “benches” to rest against, but they’re not really aimed to be sat on, just uncomfortably perched! (Field notes: high street in student area)
Mother and Baby Rooms: not enough seats
Mother and baby rooms were few and far between, and were either inaccessible or not present at the two Cardiff based transport hubs. At Cardiff Central Railway Station, I saw a single sign to a “parent & baby room”. I tried to find the room, but only found nappy changing facilities within a toilet cubicle. It was not possible to find information relating to space for infant feeding on either the Great Western Railway or Transport for Wales websites. When I contacted Transport for Wales by email, they told me that there was a mother and baby room that was kept locked, requiring a guard to access the room. Upon further questioning, I was told that the room contained a chair and plug. The lack of signage and visibility of the room means that it is not particularly useful to those who are ‘not in the know’.
In relation to Cardiff International Airport, I found information on the internet stating that there was a mother and baby room “on 1st floor departures” at the Airport, but that women are “welcome to feed wherever”. However, I was unable to find anything other than a (smelly) baby changing room, which did not contain a chair or plug to facilitate expressing. I asked a member of staff for help finding space to breastfeed:
Staff: What is it for, just privacy? No sorry I don’t think so, we’re really behind the times here.
She goes off to ask someone and asks me to wait where I am….About 15 minutes later I see her organising stock in the shop and she looks over and smiles at me. She doesn’t come to let me know either way about the mother and baby room. I guess it doesn’t exist.
Both the shopping centre and department store had mother and baby rooms. Within the shopping centre, the mother and baby room was located near the toilets. It was identifiable by an image of a baby’s bottle on the door, and felt very unwelcoming. The room was cold, smelt of baby faeces (due to the changing station located in the room), and the only seating was a single small, angular, two-seater black leather sofa with the arms at the same height as the back. The room did not allow for more than one person to comfortably sit at a time. This was in contrast to the six “family bathrooms”, containing an adult and child toilet, but no seat for infant feeding.
The final mother and baby room was the one frequently described by mothers in other research projects I have worked on as “the best” in the city centre; hosted within the third floor of the John Lewis Department store. The mother and baby room was also located near the toilets, but separate to them, and – according to images and descriptions found online - contained a separate area defined as a “Breast feeding area”, alongside a “bottlefeeding area” with bottle warming facilities. When I arrived at the mother and baby area, I could hear crying inside. Not knowing how the room was laid out, I did not want to disturb somebody who was struggling to feed, so I sat outside the room, on one of the three chairs provided in the corridor. I waited for 20 minutes, but nobody came out of the room and two more mothers with babies went in. It appears that the room was so much better than other facilities, that it was heavily over-used, even on a weekday at lunchtime.
Toilets: dirty seats
Toilets were visited in the transport hubs, on public transport, and in cafes. The worst toilets were on public transport: they were cold and industrial in design, urine scented, dirty and cramped. These were closely followed by the toilets at Cardiff Central Railway Station, which “were really dirty; the floor is visibly dirty…with an overflowing sanitary bin and various pieces of rubbish left...” The toilets at the airport, by contrast, were unremarkable; reasonably clean and tidy.
This theme of OK, but not outstanding toilets continued. The toilets in the shopping centre: “smell clean, but doesn’t look spotless. The floor…looks a bit dirty…”. The John Lewis toilets and department store toilets were similar. The toilets within the middle class café were not particularly clean, heavily scented with air freshener and were oppressively dark. By contrast, the toilet in the working class café was inexpensively decorated but “spotlessly clean”.
Cafes: paying for a seat
The John Lewis café was the only premises in Cardiff noted as breastfeeding friendly on the Feed Finder app at the time of data collection. At first glance, it did not feel ideally suited for breastfeeding in the UK, as it was a “big and open” space with bright lights and low privacy. That said, there was a high degree of civil inattention, and it was not possible to be seen by external observers, due to the café being situated on the third floor, and having the windows covered with a design to prevent external viewers. This coupled with a reputation for being “a safe space” may have resulted in a large number of babies being present. During my visit a woman next to me - with a table’s gap between us - on a long bench containing five smaller tables breastfed her infant. In the hour I was in the café, two other women breastfed their babies, and I saw a woman ask a member of staff to warm milk in a baby’s bottle, which she did quickly and without complaint, despite my feeling that: “It doesn’t look as though they have time to be attentive (but they are).”
The middle class café was akin to the positive place in Boyer’s (2011) study. The layout encouraged a feeling of intimacy: different furniture and lighting was used at most tables, including a range of sofas, arm chairs and wodden high chairs. The customers were a mixture of families with young children and/or babies, and couples in their 30 s. The staff were polite and customers behaved in individualistic ways, including a customer doing embroidery and parents feeding children items not purchased on the premises. One woman was breastfeeding a baby in an area that was both hidden from most customers’ view, but highly visible to those entering and leaving.
The café in the working class area had a totally different feel to it. The décor was clean, bright and airy, with a “counter” where staff members could see all tables, encouraging a feeling of potential surveillance. The tables were all identical in design, with narrow modern chrome and faux leather dining chairs. This less expensive café, in contrast to the other two cafes, did not encourage lingering with an expensive drink, but relied upon a faster turnover of customers. During the observation, on a weekday, the space felt quite macho, with many tables occupied by tradesmen in work wear and high visibility jackets having lunch and reading tabloid newspapers, some of which still displayed sexualised naked breasts on a daily basis. No babies or children were present, which in my previous experience was common.
At all three transport hubs, cafes were available. The pace of turnover was high, resulting in a feeling of busyness and slight stress from customers and staff alike. Gaps between tables were small, which would make fitting a pushchair into the space challenging, and would result in a high level of visibility for those who were breastfeeding.