A university professor has earned praise for cradling his student's baby during his own lecture.
Labaly Touré, a professor at the University of Kaolack in Senegal, West Africa, took to Twitter to share pictures of himself with his student's child as he taught, where he simultaneously praised student mothers for their efforts.
He captioned the sweet pictures: "This morning, I had the pleasure of holding the baby of one of my students. I'd like to pay tribute to the courage of all student moms."
The post quickly became viral, and racked up more than 111k likes and 14.5k retweets at the time of writing.
One impressed Twitter user wrote: "God bless you Sir... Such compassion and empathy is rare to find [sic]."
A second was inspired to think of their own mother's experience as a student, writing: "Wish people like this existed in 1984. My mom [sic]."
A third simply wrote: "My heart."
Touré said he's been overwhelmed by the positive response to the post, which he said he made to highlight the challenges made by student mothers.
In an interview with France24, he said: "The predicament of these young mothers highlights a problem in Senegal - daycares and nannies are expensive, so they aren't really an option for everyone, especially when you think about students who, very often, have limited financial means.
"Obviously, if my student could pay for a nanny, she would. She didn't have a choice and I wasn't going to send her away because she came to class with her baby."
The news outlet reported that the birth rate in the West African country was 36.1%, which is one of the highest in the world, with the average woman in the country having just short of five children.
Touré said of his viral tweet: "A student came to my class with her baby, who was less than a year old, tied on her back. She wasn't able to concentrate on the course like that.
"She put the baby on her lap, and when I saw that, I offered to take the baby myself so that she could focus on class. I kept the baby with me for the entire class, he stayed very calm."
