Milk sharing has been in the news lately. In 2013, Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH analyzed over 100 samples of breast milk being sold online and found that 10% of the samples were contaminated with cow’s milk. Almost 75% of the samples contained disease-causing bacteria, presumably linked to poor collection and storage practices.1 As the results from these and similar studies make their rounds on internet news outlets, responses ranged from unsurprised sarcasm to outrage.
During this tumult, I made the unfortunate choice to participate in conversations on social media about the results of this study. When a local news station ran a piece on the study, responses to the article online ranged from “Ew gross, that’s like selling my ejaculate,” to “my kid had formula and is just fine, obtaining someone else’s breast milk is not necessary and these parents deserve what they got,” to “1000 ounces donated so far! Breast milk saves lives!” The media’s ignorance about the practice of milk sharing has done some damage: it has implied that breastfeeding advocacy has gone too far, resulting in parents who take risks to avoid formula that, to many, don’t seem worth it. Readers have agreed and have also concluded that lactating women have been taking advantage of naïve parents. Milk sharing, they have decided, is weird, unnecessary, and dangerous. The Anthro Doula has given this conversation some anthropological perspective. Now it deserves some historical perspective.
The exchange of breast milk for money has always been problematic. Unlike today, it initially had very little to do with the advent of artificial feeding that occurred in the 19th century. Traditionally, human milk was sold directly from the tap as families in need hired wet-nurses to feed their children. Even when wet-nursing was the only alternative to maternal breast feeding, and thus a matter of life or death, wet-nurses suffered harsh defamation. Sixteenth-century Italian poet Luigi Tansillo wrote that wet-nurses are “… soothed by no kindness, by no threats subdued, Perverse, lascivious, insolent and rude.”2 Eighteenth-century Scottish physician George Armstrong wrote, “Farther, a good wet-nurse is not always readily to be had, especially in or near great cities, where so many of them are given to drinking, and other vices; and the worst of them will fall upon means of procuring a good character from some hand or other.”3
I think it’s easy for historians to see how this dynamic betrays a deep-seated suspicion of women’s bodies and behaviors. Such suspicion goes hand in hand with the surveillance of women’s bodies that was commonplace in pre-modern eras. But it’s harder for us to see our own failings in this area. In many ways, contemporary suspicion about milk sharing suggests that little has changed. It belies our deep distrust in the behaviors and bodies of lactating women. They are accused of sub-par hygiene, perhaps because food safety rules are much less strict for breast milk than for pasteurized milks and infant formulas. They are sometimes accused of having some perverse desire to make money with their bodies, which historically and presently is related to prostitution. They are suspected of providing contaminated or diluted product. As it was with wet-nursing in the pre-modern world, some of these accusations are warranted. The study noted above is a case in point. Wet-nurses did sometimes underfeed or hand-feed their infants while taking money for nursing, just as some moms selling their breast milk have topped off their yields with cow’s milk or have gotten lazy about their collection hygiene.
But, as sensational journalism (and at times, sensational histories) tend to do, this story focuses on the extraordinary rather than on the ordinary, the exceptions rather than the rule. Most incidents of milk sharing in pre-modern eras, as well as most incidents of milk sharing TODAY, involve no exchange of money. In the medieval and early modern periods, women nursed other kids for neighbors or family. Even now, women pump for friends or acquaintances free of charge. This goes some way toward correcting the societal mistrust of lactating women and modern squeamishness that has prevented women from actually putting other people’s babies to their breasts. It is telling that the media, and that many histories, have chosen to focus on the instances of milk sharing that reinforce our mistrust of women’s bodies and intentions rather than those that mitigate them. Most of society is, apparently, not yet ready to endow lactating women with the same trust we have readily given to dairy and formula corporations (which have their own issues with ethics and hygiene, I might add).
One solution for advocates of milk sharing is lobbying for institutionalization and FDA-regulation of breast milk sales. This would ensure the safety of breast milk sales around the country. But it also reinforces the idea that lactating women cannot be trusted, that remuneration for their breast milk will encourage unethical practices. This kind of regulation may result in pasteurization of breast milk, a process that destroys many of its benefits. Lastly, the resources required to create this reality may cost recipients money and time that they can ill afford.
This is why non-remunerative milk sharing is so genius. There is an internal logic to milk donation. It removes money from the equation, which eliminates the temptation to engage in unethical practices. Women donating their excess breast milk are using the same milk to feed their own children. Therefore their desire to keep their own children healthy and disease-free is transferred to the babies to whom they donate their breast milk. Babies receiving these donations benefit from the donor’s antibodies in addition to all the other magical properties of breast milk. If the child drinks from multiple donors, these immunity benefits are even more significant. In this case there is, unfortunately, still the potential for unsanitary collection and storage, but these risks can be mitigated by education and by personal relationships between donors and recipients that encourage friendly accountability.
By far the best option, yet one that is much less common than it was historically, is for lactating women to feed babies in need directly from their breasts, free of charge. This can be done in a casual or scheduled manner, and can be combined with childcare, or not. It eliminates the risk of unsanitary collection and still boasts of the benefits of the internal logic of non-remunerative breast feeding. When babies nurse, they share antibodies with the nurse’s body as well as communicate to the body the need for more milk, so this kind of milk sharing benefits the nurse as well.
I have participated in this kind of milk sharing. I have nursed my friends’ children. Most people stare at me, mouths gaping, when I share this, trying to wrap their heads around how I could do such a thing. Like it or not, most Americans still associate breasts and sucking with sex acts. Scientific research about the nutritional and developmental benefits of breast feeding has convinced us that “breast is best,” but for many this sentiment is riddled with exceptions and caveats. Let’s face it, women putting other women’s children to their breasts is taboo. Forget women selling their breast milk to fetishists and body-builders, or uneducated mothers in the third world giving their children watered-down formula because western influence has convinced them that their bodies are broken and their milk is inferior. Those things aren’t nearly as outrageous to most Americans as me feeding a child in need the same way I feed my own children. Scandalous! Skeevy! Just not “something we do.”
Despite mainstream disapproval, there are small communities of women who depend on this kind of milk sharing. When my friend was suffering from cancer and was unable to breast feed her daughter due to her chemotherapy, friends, myself included, nursed her daughter whenever they stopped by to visit or help around the house. The rest of the time, her beautiful girl took breast milk from bottles, which had been donated from women around the country.
Another time, I nursed a friend’s son during a growth spurt so that she could relax and have a couple glasses of wine, guilt free. Another girlfriend nursed him as well that night — she was returning the favor from when this tired mom nursed her young daughter when she was in the hospital for an emergency procedure. This night was more casual. We all got to hang out, see the baby, and give mom a rest. This kind of milk sharing, called cross-nursing, is not only good for the small growing bodies of our nation’s infants. It nurtures solidarity between mothers, those who breast feed and those who cannot or do not. It also works to correct societal mistrust of women’s bodies.
I look forward to the day when milk sharing, and specifically cross-nursing is just something people do — like changing a diaper or washing the dishes. It would be evidence of a society that trusts and values babies, women, and their bodies for all the right reasons, a society that respects a woman’s choice whether or not to use her body to feed her baby, and that offers practical solutions to give bottle-fed babies breast milk if their families so choose. It would be a society that cultivates trust and affection among families. But perhaps most simply, cross-nursing just makes sense.
This post is dedicated to the memory of Heather Wascak.
- Sarah Keim, “Cow’s Milk Found in Online Breast Milk,” 700 Children’s, April 6, 2015. Return to text.
- Luigi Tansillo, The Nurse, a Poem, Trans. Luigi Tansillo, (Dublin: Printed by B. Dornin, 1800). Return to text.
George Armstrong, An Account of the Diseases Most Incident to Children, From the Birth Till the Age of Puberty; with a Successful Method of Treating Them. To Which Is Added, an Essay on Nursing: with a Particular View to Children Who Are Brought Up by Hand. Also a Short General Account of the Dispensary for the Infant Poor (London: T. Cadell, 1783), 155. Return to text.