S3 E5. From Ancient Bottles to Modern Struggles: A Deep Dive into Breastfeeding with Joanna Wolfarth, author of Milk

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[00:00:30] I was breastfeeding in public for the first time as a mother, but I was bringing with me all of this baggage 35 years of being a woman in the public sphere in public space where we know we're being scrutinized.

[00:00:59] We know we're constantly being objectified. We know that we're not safe. We're catcalled when we're 12 years old in our school uniform, you know, and that continues.

[00:01:09] And breastfeeding in public feeds into that conversation as well of just what it is to be a non cis male in the public sphere.

[00:01:29] Welcome to Season 3 of The Story of Woman. I'm your host, Anna Stoecklein.

[00:01:34] From the intricacies of the economy and health care to the nuances of workplace bias and gender roles, each episode of this season features interviews with thought leaders who provide fresh perspectives on critical global issues, all through the female gaze.

[00:01:49] But this podcast isn't just about women's stories. It's about rewriting our collective story to be more inclusive, equitable and effective in driving change.

[00:01:59] It's about changing the current story of mankind to the much more complete story of humankind.

[00:02:06] Hello friends and welcome back. Thank you as always for being here.

[00:02:26] Today, we are diving into a topic that holds a pretty big significance in the lives of all human beings, breast milk.

[00:02:35] I'm thrilled to be speaking with Joanna Walfarth, author of Milk, an intimate history of breastfeeding.

[00:02:42] And just like how Joanna's book is not just for mothers or parents or people who want to become parents, neither is this conversation.

[00:02:51] Believe it or not, as you'll soon hear, how we feed our babies and the experiences of the caregivers who feed all of the world's babies matters to us all.

[00:03:01] We'll kick off the conversation with a quick biology lesson because of course, as seems to be a theme with women's health, there is not very much research into this topic, even though it's growing.

[00:03:13] So there's a lot of stuff that most of us don't know.

[00:03:17] So for example, did you know that there is a back and forth dialogue that happens between the baby and the mom, the baby's immune system and needs and then the milk that the body produces in response to that?

[00:03:30] I had no idea. And there's a few other tidbits like that. So be prepared to be amazed by the wonders of the human body.

[00:03:39] And we'll also get into motherhood as a social construct and all the different ways the idea of what being a quote, good mother has changed throughout time and how breastfeeding ties into all of this.

[00:03:51] And we'll reflect on how we arrived at our current situation, one where women who struggle with breastfeeding or choose not to often face judgment and shame.

[00:04:03] And one where breastfeeding in public is somehow still up for debate, even though I mean among other reasons that it shouldn't be.

[00:04:13] These same public spaces are often lacking the facilities a woman might need to feed her child and private in the first place.

[00:04:22] Stay tuned to hear what percentage of the UK population thinks breastfeeding public is wrong and even prefers babies to be fed in restrooms rather than at restaurant tables.

[00:04:34] Joanna Walfarth is a writer, cultural historian and lecturer. She's a specialist in Southeast Asian art history and currently teaches at Open University.

[00:04:45] And lastly, I want to give a quick shout out to Kalani Jenkins who is my assistant producer on this episode. The first one of those for the story of women, which is very exciting and she has been incredible to work with on this.

[00:04:59] So thank you so much Kalani. If you like what you hear today, please, please take a minute to rate and review where every listen and don't forget to follow the story of women on social media or you can find clips from the interviews and much more.

[00:05:14] But for now, without further ado, please enjoy this enlightening conversation with Joanna Walfarth.

[00:05:22] Hello, Joanna. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

[00:05:38] Oh, thank you so much for having me. I can't wait.

[00:05:41] Yeah. So we're talking today about your new book, Milk, an Intimate History of Breastfeeding. And I want to start with the story of how you arrived to the point writing this book and a little bit about what it's about because I imagine there might be two camps of listeners.

[00:05:59] One who hears this and is, oh yes, this has to do with women and women's bodies and reproductive care. Of course there's going to be a big story here and a lot of history to tell that leads us to where we are today.

[00:06:13] And there might be others who are thinking, well, this is just an innate part of the human experience, the human condition. And it always has been so what could we even be talking about today?

[00:06:25] So I'd love to dive in with your personal story that kind of led to all of the research and intern this book and then we can get into some of the history itself.

[00:06:35] Sure. Well, I mean, both of those listener camps would be kind of absolutely correct in many ways. And I think that's what makes this subject so interesting.

[00:06:45] I think also there will be another segment of people who feel that this is not a topic that is applicable to them.

[00:06:55] Usually that's men, of course, who would probably not pick up this book in a bookstore, unfortunately.

[00:07:01] But like you said, it's something of an innate condition of humanity. Breast milk is humanity's first food.

[00:07:09] And we were all babies once and once upon a time we were fed. And I wanted to explore those different ways that we may have been fed and the different experiences and feelings that our caregivers may have felt while they were feeding us.

[00:07:26] So this book came to me very, very early on in my own parenthood experience. I always knew that I would breastfeed if I ever had children.

[00:07:39] It wasn't something I thought about particularly but my own mother had breastfed us and I just came from a family of breastfeeders and it seemed like the easy option.

[00:07:49] It seemed like the free option. So, you know, of course that's what I was going to do.

[00:07:54] And then of course the reality of having a baby and for many parents breastfeeding is trouble-free.

[00:08:03] But for others it can take a while to get the hang of it. You and the baby are learning a new skill.

[00:08:09] It's a new relationship between you and your baby. There can be other issues that arise.

[00:08:14] And, you know, we experienced those issues. So my son at about four weeks old went back into hospital because he'd lost quite a lot of weight.

[00:08:24] I thought breastfeeding had been going well and clearly it hadn't because now I look back and think, thank goodness it was just a problem with feeding.

[00:08:33] You know, it was easily remedied with some formula and a breast pump and it wasn't anything more serious.

[00:08:38] But at the time it was devastating. You know, my body had let me down. I had let my son down.

[00:08:44] And I was wrestling with all of this and wrestling with all these images of breastfeeding I'd seen as an art historian.

[00:08:52] And I thought I need to write about this. If only for myself I need to grapple with all of these emotions and all of these feelings.

[00:09:00] Absolutely. And we'll dive into everything that you discovered on your journey because as you point out in the book,

[00:09:06] because this is innate as we mentioned, this is seen as natural sometimes that's a synonym that's used for easy.

[00:09:12] And then when it doesn't come easy, these other feelings of feeling unnatural somehow feeling like you're failing.

[00:09:19] You know, I think this is quite a common experience.

[00:09:22] And you point this out early on in the book. So I want to point it out early on in our conversation that mothering is not restricted to a gestational or birthing body

[00:09:31] and that it must also include trans and non-binary parents as well as adoptive parents.

[00:09:36] So I just want to take a moment to highlight that and to see if you can elaborate on that point at all for us so we have that same understanding moving into this conversation.

[00:09:45] Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to make it very clear early on that when I'm talking about mothering broadly,

[00:09:51] sometimes in the book that is a synonym for caregiving or parent. Sometimes it's not if I'm referring to myself,

[00:09:59] but also in the course of my research you realize that across histories in certain cultures, ideas of gender are different and gender expression becomes different

[00:10:08] and the number of genders is different.

[00:10:10] And so I wanted to highlight the way in which the term mother historically and within different cultures doesn't necessarily refer to the person who gave birth to the child.

[00:10:22] And I believe that that's true now as well here today. So that's important as well.

[00:10:28] And I can point to interesting stories around people, women who have induced lactation even though they didn't give birth to their child, but they breastfed their child.

[00:10:39] So breastfeeding doesn't follow that you have to give birth to the child to then breastfeed the child.

[00:10:45] Yeah, and it's a great point to bring up upfront, you know, the social construction of gender which the listeners of this podcast will be familiar with

[00:10:54] and that stems into the social construction of motherhood itself, which we will get into very shortly.

[00:11:01] But before we do, I thought we'd do a quick biology lesson to start because early on in the book you recall your surprise when quote,

[00:11:12] swollen and ready for birth.

[00:11:14] I first tried to express milk by hand and found that the nipples didn't have just one outlet, but like a garden hose instead of thick fluid appears as if from a sprinkler.

[00:11:25] And I will not lie to you as a non mother, never having breastfed myself.

[00:11:31] This was complete news to me as well. And I even trained to be a nurse.

[00:11:36] I've even have worked in the healthcare field and do not remember this ever coming up in the lessons and I was like, Holy shit, is that how it works?

[00:11:44] So would you mind briefly explaining to us how milk production in the body works and then, yeah, what do you think the implications are for us as individuals

[00:11:54] and as a society that we know so little about even just this basic part of such a life giving physiological process?

[00:12:04] Yeah, it's so surprising isn't it but also really unsurprising I think to which we don't know our own bodies or you know,

[00:12:14] our own bodies have not been kind of common knowledge isn't it across the medical world and medical science,

[00:12:20] the neglect around thinking about female bodies. So that was definitely a surprise to me.

[00:12:25] So historically breast milk was thought to be menstrual blood and so from the time of the ancient Greeks right through up until the early modern period,

[00:12:38] there was a belief that as menstruation stops during pregnancy,

[00:12:43] what happens is that there's a vein that connected the uterus to the breasts and the menstrual blood would come from the uterus up this special vein

[00:12:54] and the body's heat and various other things would change it into breast milk.

[00:12:58] There was a lot of them kind of symbolic and metaphorical connections between menstrual blood and breast milk and a lot of taboos

[00:13:06] that connected the two as you can imagine taboos around blood and menstrual blood.

[00:13:12] What we actually know now is that breast milk works on a supply and demand basis and so when you are close to giving birth or after birth,

[00:13:24] your body produces a hormone called prolactin and that prompts the little ducts in your breast tissue to take all of the kind of fat

[00:13:33] and sugars and proteins and things from your blood supply and make it into milk and then the milk obviously then comes out

[00:13:41] and so there's a lot of involvement of hormones, of prolactin, of oxytocin, that lovely love hormone that can be released when you're giving birth.

[00:13:50] So breast milk is still made through the blood but we now have a much better understanding of actually how that process works

[00:13:56] and that there is no magical vein that connects the uterus to the breasts.

[00:14:01] We do know much better of how it works.

[00:14:05] However, I am going to point out one thing you point out in your book which was both exactly as you say surprising and not surprising at all

[00:14:14] which is that we have more scientific research on tomatoes than we do breast milk.

[00:14:21] This is from your book.

[00:14:23] So a search of the most comprehensive scholarly database Web of Science found 10,000 scholarly articles relating to tomatoes

[00:14:32] but only 3,636 relating to breast milk and it gets better.

[00:14:38] Seaman brings up 7,851 articles and minstrel blood just 239.

[00:14:47] That could not be a better example of I guess how we prioritize things in society as it stands.

[00:14:55] Absolutely.

[00:14:58] And again it's something that when I was doing the research and you look historically, there is so much around breast milk

[00:15:04] obviously was known to be good for babies but also it has such symbolic potential.

[00:15:10] So breast milk often becomes a metaphor within the Christian church for example and so on.

[00:15:17] So it's known to be this magical substance really early on.

[00:15:20] I mean even the ancient Greeks talk about how the stars, the constellation, the Milky Way comes from divine breast milk.

[00:15:27] So there's always been that level of knowledge but in terms of actually what we would now call scientific research into it

[00:15:34] that's something that has been a much more recent development and historically there was far less research into breast milk

[00:15:41] and so on compared to men's secretions and tomatoes.

[00:15:47] And so we know now that breast milk is a living substance.

[00:15:50] It has loads of things to support the microbiome and things like that.

[00:15:54] So it's an incredible substance.

[00:15:56] It is.

[00:15:57] Again I was blown away not just by the mechanics of it but by the actual composition.

[00:16:03] You wrote about how when breast milk interacts with a baby's saliva, it secretes antibacterial compounds

[00:16:11] that can fight against different harmful bacteria like Salmonella.

[00:16:14] I had no idea there was that kind of back and forth interaction.

[00:16:17] Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:18] And the specifics I think of how that interaction works, the mechanisms of that is something that is being explored

[00:16:23] and I think the saliva feedback is one theory but there is definitely a dialogue happening between the baby's immune system

[00:16:32] and needs and then the milk that the body then produces in response to that.

[00:16:36] Similarly the hormone levels and the composition of milk may change.

[00:16:40] It may change depending on the time of day.

[00:16:42] There's going to be more melatonin in the breast milk towards the end of the day to promote sleep.

[00:16:54] But also it might vary depending on whether it's your first baby or your second baby, the sex of the baby.

[00:17:00] There's loads of different ways.

[00:17:01] It's such a responsive substance.

[00:17:03] The feedback, the back and forth I think yeah that's incredible

[00:17:07] and I really look forward to more research continuing onward to see what else we find out as that number hopefully one day passes the number of tomato articles.

[00:17:18] But in summary it is a quite miraculous magical substance

[00:17:23] and that's kind of what's going on inside of our bodies but what you look at a lot

[00:17:28] and what we're going to really focus the conversation on today is what's happening outside of our bodies

[00:17:34] and you write early on in the book that we can't talk about breastfeeding without understanding that motherhood is a social construct

[00:17:41] just what we touched upon in the beginning and then throughout the book you talk about all the different ways

[00:17:46] socioeconomic, scientific, political, all these different ways of the ideas of what a good mother is has been kind of constructed and deconstructed.

[00:17:57] So can you just kind of help us understand how is motherhood a social construct

[00:18:03] and then perhaps before we get into some of the current barriers to breastfeeding

[00:18:08] can you walk us through some of the historical examples of how this construct has shaped

[00:18:14] not just what we think about breastfeeding in motherhood but how at times it gave us little choice in the matter.

[00:18:22] Yeah, Adrian Rich draws that distinction right between motherhood as the institution, as the social construct

[00:18:29] and then mothering as the act, you know, mothering as a verb

[00:18:33] and I would say mothering as a verb is something that I would say is non-gender specific

[00:18:38] but motherhood as a kind of institution, as a socially constructed identity

[00:18:44] it's all of those things around what makes a good mother

[00:18:49] I think it kind of wraps itself up in a language around what is natural, what is innate

[00:18:55] what good mothers should do, the emotions they should feel, the responses they should feel

[00:19:01] it's constructed I think around this idea of it's a very sentimental kind of picture of motherhood

[00:19:08] it's about motherhood as kind of self-sacrifice for your child

[00:19:12] that if you want to do anything that takes you, that is anything other than being a mother that's somehow viewed as selfish

[00:19:18] it's the kind of ideas about motherhood that we see play out in discussions around working moms

[00:19:24] around stay at home dads, around the choice between formula and breastfeeding

[00:19:30] which is something that I think you know I'm so glad we have that choice

[00:19:35] there are choices available to parents but it's about this kind of cultural imposition on us

[00:19:42] and how we should be in the world and it comes with so many value judgments

[00:19:47] I thought that was a really important distinction that you made throughout the book

[00:19:51] motherhood compared to mothering that Adrienne Rich and other people have pointed out

[00:19:55] and this is again a quote from your book mother is to nurture

[00:19:59] mother is not a fixed stable identity instead like love it is both a noun and a verb

[00:20:06] and mother work can be considered doing, caring, nurturing

[00:20:10] whereas motherhood is a noun in a kind of fixed state of being

[00:20:15] so I think that really helps to kind of paint the picture between the two

[00:20:19] so then looking at motherhood and looking at that fixed state that's kind of a social construct

[00:20:26] help us understand how has this changed throughout time

[00:20:30] so we want to talk about what's going on in the current day

[00:20:34] the current barriers and challenges but I think it's really helpful as you know

[00:20:38] and this is kind of what led you to it to look back in time

[00:20:42] to see how did we get to this where we are today

[00:20:45] and obviously your book is very comprehensive and it's very dependent on location

[00:20:50] and time and class and so many different variables

[00:20:53] but can you give us a sense of how these messages, these constructs have kind of changed and evolved over time?

[00:21:00] Absolutely. I think one of the best, you know

[00:21:02] how we feed our children, how we feed our babies is actually

[00:21:05] it's such a good way of seeing the different ways that motherhood has been constructed

[00:21:09] you know motherhood is a kind of fixed identity of something that is imposed on us from

[00:21:14] from kind of outside forces so for example thinking about wet nursing

[00:21:19] right who feeds the baby and of course there is so many questions of class

[00:21:25] and status and wealth that comes into this

[00:21:28] but for so much of history it wouldn't always have been a birth mother feeding her own child

[00:21:36] and that's still true today it's true of certain cultures, certain societies

[00:21:41] where shared feeding is a kind of completely usual part of child rearing

[00:21:48] so if the birth mother has to go and do something else or can't feed her own baby

[00:21:52] somebody else within that kinship group will carry out the task

[00:21:56] and I know women here in the UK who do that

[00:21:59] although I think it's far less talked about here

[00:22:02] because we have a construction of motherhood which can view that as quite a taboo thing to do

[00:22:07] but then of course that kind of shared feeding becomes something more formalised

[00:22:12] in the practice of wet nursing so we have ancient Babylonian texts

[00:22:17] which are contracts which specify the length at which a wet nurse would be employed

[00:22:22] to feed a baby, the kinds of payment she would get, the kinds of status

[00:22:27] she would be allowed to have in Egypt wet nurses who wet nursed Pharaohs

[00:22:33] were very high status and the children of the wet nurse were seen as sort of like kin to the kinship

[00:22:39] there was a connection between them, they were kind of milky siblings or milk kin

[00:22:44] and then if we look at Europe you know having royal babies, aristocratic babies

[00:22:51] wealthy families, babies fed by wet nurses

[00:22:54] because the role of their birth mother was to get back to the business of procreation

[00:22:59] so not wanting to be tied up, breastfeeding, wanting to return to fertility

[00:23:05] so they can produce more babies

[00:23:07] also there was a belief that sort of in early modern England

[00:23:11] that sexual intercourse could trouble the breast milk

[00:23:15] so it might curdle the breast milk, the body gets too excited

[00:23:19] so if you have the means to employ a wet nurse

[00:23:25] then you want to employ a wet nurse so that your wife can return to the marital bed

[00:23:30] so there's all these ideas about the role of the woman, the role of the mother

[00:23:35] as both a mother and a wife

[00:23:37] and the ways in which certain mothering duties were kind of packaged out

[00:23:43] and then in Western Europe towards the end of the 18th century

[00:23:49] there was a kind of change and there was this idea that actually wet nursing is problematic

[00:23:55] one concern that you do see throughout history is that a wet nurse might pass on

[00:24:01] characteristics of the baby through the milk

[00:24:04] so there were concerns in the 17th and 18th centuries

[00:24:08] that working class women who were wet nurses

[00:24:11] might pass on undesirable traits to the children

[00:24:14] immoral character, you have wealthier men who start writing about how all of their health misfortunes in adulthood

[00:24:23] are down to the fact that their wet nurse wasn't healthy enough

[00:24:27] or wasn't of a higher social standing

[00:24:30] so there's all these concerns around wet nursing

[00:24:34] there was also practical concerns around passing on things like syphilis between a wet nurse and a child

[00:24:40] so there was a lot of concerns about wet nursing

[00:24:42] and what we see is philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[00:24:46] who famously kind of constructs this idea of we've got to get mankind back to the kind of nature

[00:24:52] we've got to restore a kind of moral sense of duty amongst men

[00:24:57] and the way to do that is birth mothers should feed their own babies

[00:25:01] so it's not just a health issue, it's not just about what's best for baby

[00:25:05] it's what's best for the whole of civilization and for the whole of mankind

[00:25:09] and so you then get lots of writing promoting the importance of a mother feeding her own child

[00:25:17] so wet nursing goes out of fashion

[00:25:19] and this idea of the mother as sentimental, nurturing, non-sexual

[00:25:27] so that distinction between maternity and sexuality starts to come to the fore

[00:25:32] and that completely changes how we think about mothers

[00:25:35] and the mothering role, particularly mothers with their infants

[00:25:39] and worth noting Rousseau as you point out in your book

[00:25:45] was a big advocate as you say really had this push for making sure that it's the birth mother

[00:25:52] that feeds the child and then where did he send his children?

[00:25:56] They all went to Foundling hospitals

[00:26:00] To have wet nurses

[00:26:02] If they were lucky the children in the Foundling hospitals would be sent to wet nurses

[00:26:07] otherwise they would be what was known as kind of dry fed

[00:26:10] so it would be something like a mixture of pap, you know, kind of milky, barley, bread, concoction

[00:26:16] or they would be fed with animal milk, with goat milk or something

[00:26:20] Rousseau's own children he certainly was not involved in the day-to-day upbringing

[00:26:25] he was barely involved in that upbringing at all

[00:26:27] and yeah, he certainly didn't make sure that they were fed by their birth mother

[00:26:31] Which I just feel like that's a little microcosm

[00:26:33] a little good example of the people who are coming up with these rules and norms throughout time

[00:26:39] and the ones that are actually living them out

[00:26:43] Absolutely

[00:26:44] Absolutely

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[00:28:02] So that's a good feel for how it's changed throughout time.

[00:28:05] And in your book, there's this really clear demarcation,

[00:28:10] I guess you could call it from the industrialization age

[00:28:14] to where we get to today.

[00:28:16] So perhaps could you walk us through some of the biggest

[00:28:19] changes that occurred around the social norms

[00:28:23] and what happened with breastfeeding

[00:28:24] around the time of industrialization?

[00:28:26] Yeah, I mean, we start to see,

[00:28:27] I suppose ideas of time changing,

[00:28:31] ideas of how we measure our working day

[00:28:35] and that becomes by the clock, right?

[00:28:37] By the minute and the hour.

[00:28:39] But also in terms of where women were living and working.

[00:28:43] So we start to see obviously the move to cities

[00:28:47] and urbanization, which would often take women away

[00:28:51] from maybe the support that they would have

[00:28:52] from their community, maybe having, you know,

[00:28:54] their mothers or their other kind of kinships

[00:28:57] and support that they would have to help with child rearing.

[00:29:00] If women are going out to work in factories,

[00:29:03] then they're no longer working in the home.

[00:29:06] So I kind of, it's a big contrast to make,

[00:29:10] but there is this wonderful sixth century bronze statue

[00:29:14] that I came across in my research.

[00:29:15] It's from Indonesia and it shows a woman

[00:29:18] sitting on the floor very upright

[00:29:21] and she has a foot loom.

[00:29:23] So she's a weaver.

[00:29:24] She has her loom at her feet,

[00:29:26] but she's paused that while she breastfeeds her baby.

[00:29:30] It's a beautiful image.

[00:29:32] And we see throughout history

[00:29:34] where women would have worked within the home,

[00:29:37] but they would have been able to pause their work

[00:29:40] to feed their baby or whatever.

[00:29:42] But if you're going out to a factory, you can't do that.

[00:29:44] So there were ways that ideas around feeding babies

[00:29:48] to a schedule.

[00:29:49] So feeding them every three hours, every four hours.

[00:29:53] Obviously if women were going out to work,

[00:29:55] then that would perhaps affect their milk supply

[00:29:58] because it works on a supply and demand basis.

[00:30:01] And so then sometimes that would be detrimental

[00:30:05] to women's milk supply.

[00:30:07] They would then supplement feeding

[00:30:09] with animal milks or PAP,

[00:30:11] which weren't good for the babies

[00:30:12] and also were delivered in very unhygienic ways.

[00:30:16] There was no sterilization.

[00:30:18] So the bottles were often dirty and disease ridden.

[00:30:21] And then we see that kind of continue

[00:30:23] in what we see in the early 20th century

[00:30:25] with the rise of what was known as scientific motherhood

[00:30:29] and this idea of things needing to be quantifiable.

[00:30:33] And breastfeeding is really hard to quantify sometimes.

[00:30:37] You can look at your baby,

[00:30:38] we can think about baby's weight and so on,

[00:30:40] but it was a way of trying,

[00:30:43] I suppose to kind of put motherhood

[00:30:47] in a kind of scientific language.

[00:30:50] So feeding by the clock,

[00:30:52] feeding for certain amounts of time,

[00:30:54] feeding for certain intervals of time.

[00:30:57] And I think that really, really changed

[00:30:59] how we think about our bodies.

[00:31:02] They become industrial, they become machines.

[00:31:06] It's more militarized in a certain sense.

[00:31:09] And I think probably a consequence of that

[00:31:11] was women becoming more divorced

[00:31:13] perhaps from their bodies as well

[00:31:14] and less trusting of their bodies.

[00:31:17] Yeah, and I'm wondering if we can look at any of this

[00:31:21] and see how it's kind of evolved

[00:31:23] to some of the barriers that we see today.

[00:31:26] Seeing this division between paid work women going out

[00:31:29] and working and having this divide,

[00:31:32] meaning that their breastfeeding bodies

[00:31:35] weren't visible like they were before

[00:31:37] and then they come across these different barriers

[00:31:39] that we'll get into.

[00:31:40] So yeah, can you tell us about some

[00:31:41] of the current barriers to breastfeeding that exist

[00:31:45] and if you feel like any of this kind of stems

[00:31:47] from these problems that you've mentioned,

[00:31:49] how that's kind of connected?

[00:31:50] Well, I think one problem that we can draw parallels to

[00:31:53] is the problem of kind of going out and paid work.

[00:31:56] And so the absolute need and right

[00:32:00] for parents to have paid parental leave.

[00:32:04] I was very fortunate that I'm in the UK.

[00:32:06] So I was entitled to a year from work

[00:32:10] and much of that year was paid.

[00:32:12] And that I think is absolutely necessary

[00:32:15] to kind of establish breastfeeding,

[00:32:17] to establish yourself as a mother or as a caregiver

[00:32:22] and to be with your baby

[00:32:23] if that's what you kind of choose to do

[00:32:24] and what's right for you.

[00:32:25] So there has to be this investment, right?

[00:32:29] By governments and by employers to support caregivers

[00:32:34] and to make sure that they have access to paid leave.

[00:32:39] And I think this idea that it's kind of,

[00:32:41] that it's natural, that it's free, that it's easy.

[00:32:45] I think it can be a way of putting all of the responsibility

[00:32:48] on the individual woman, on the individual parent

[00:32:52] without looking at the broader connections

[00:32:55] without saying, well, we need structural support.

[00:32:58] We need financial investment.

[00:32:59] We need all of those things.

[00:33:01] When you look back at history,

[00:33:03] women would be mothering in communities

[00:33:07] with structural support around them.

[00:33:09] And I think that is something that is missing now

[00:33:13] and something that we need.

[00:33:15] And I think that does come from the idea of

[00:33:18] the industrial kind of woman's body, right?

[00:33:21] That does this because it's innate,

[00:33:22] because it's natural

[00:33:24] and therefore doesn't need any external support

[00:33:27] or external help.

[00:33:28] Yeah, yeah, these quote unquote natural work

[00:33:31] that is being done still has to exist

[00:33:34] within these systems and structures.

[00:33:36] And because of that, as you say,

[00:33:38] then it's gonna be especially,

[00:33:40] particularly groups of people that suffer,

[00:33:44] people that are already left out of these systems

[00:33:47] marginalized within these systems.

[00:33:49] So yeah, anything that you can talk to

[00:33:50] about how these barriers impact particularly

[00:33:53] along the class and racial lines?

[00:33:56] Yeah, I mean breastfeeding,

[00:33:58] I said right at the beginning that it's free

[00:33:59] and it's only free if you don't value women's labor.

[00:34:03] Yeah.

[00:34:04] But yes, there are different intersections

[00:34:07] of class, of race.

[00:34:09] And that's very, very different, I think,

[00:34:12] within a UK context compared to a North American context

[00:34:16] and to the context within the US.

[00:34:18] There's very different histories there.

[00:34:20] There's very different histories along racial lines

[00:34:23] in terms of mothering and parenting

[00:34:25] and the legacies of enslavement still linger.

[00:34:29] So that there's real kind of differences,

[00:34:32] I think within the different contexts.

[00:34:34] Here in the UK, which I'm much more familiar with,

[00:34:38] it's interesting that actually breastfeeding

[00:34:41] over the last kind of 50 years has been

[00:34:44] kind of more prevalent and more supported

[00:34:47] within Black and Asian communities

[00:34:52] where there often is more kind of family support

[00:34:54] and it's seen as the done thing.

[00:34:56] I was talking to someone quite recently

[00:34:58] about in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s in the UK

[00:35:02] where breastfeeding rates were quite low

[00:35:04] because formula was seen as the best thing for your baby

[00:35:07] and it was seen as something you can afford to buy formula.

[00:35:11] It was a status symbol.

[00:35:12] And actually women in cities in the north of England

[00:35:17] where there was big communities

[00:35:18] from the Asian subcontinent

[00:35:20] would often feed their babies formula in public

[00:35:24] but breastfeed them at home

[00:35:25] because breastfeeding is what they felt supported in doing

[00:35:27] and what they wanted to do within their community

[00:35:29] but they felt a broader pressure

[00:35:31] to look like a good mom and a good parent

[00:35:34] and doing the best by using formula.

[00:35:36] So there's so many different points of intersection

[00:35:39] and where those ideas of what being a good mom,

[00:35:44] where they come from and where they are imposed from

[00:35:47] and also the legacies in the baggage

[00:35:48] that we all carry within us.

[00:35:51] Absolutely.

[00:35:52] And I appreciate you sharing all of that background.

[00:35:54] I'm happy to jump in here real quick on the American side

[00:35:58] and go on a quick tangent about the disparities there

[00:36:02] because yeah, I've just got some stuff written down here

[00:36:05] because as an American, as someone who has been speaking

[00:36:11] about everything going on there

[00:36:13] in terms of Roe being overturned

[00:36:16] and lack of healthcare and all of that

[00:36:18] that all of this just feeds into that dire picture

[00:36:22] and situation that inevitably impacts

[00:36:25] marginalized communities more than anyone.

[00:36:27] But in America, speaking of that healthcare

[00:36:30] there is no universal healthcare

[00:36:33] and no family pay leave, zero days.

[00:36:36] I am aware of this and I hear stories

[00:36:41] of people having to go back to work

[00:36:43] two weeks after giving birth

[00:36:45] and I just cannot wrap my head around

[00:36:50] how that is possible in any way.

[00:36:53] I find it, yeah, it is deeply disturbing, deeply disturbing.

[00:36:59] Two weeks and I had Reshma Sajjani on here

[00:37:03] in the last season who has an organization

[00:37:06] that's advocating for policies for paid leave

[00:37:09] and for more support and she told two stories

[00:37:11] and one was of a woman who was literally in labor

[00:37:14] trying to get an email across the line on her laptop

[00:37:18] because she needed or an email, a document,

[00:37:20] whatever it doesn't matter.

[00:37:21] On her laptop working on something

[00:37:23] that needed to be done by midnight

[00:37:25] or else she wouldn't qualify for her leave

[00:37:28] and she's literally in active labor

[00:37:29] and the other story she told was of exactly

[00:37:31] as you say two weeks back and it was a NICU nurse.

[00:37:35] So it was a nurse going back

[00:37:36] to take care of other people's newborns

[00:37:38] two weeks after having their own

[00:37:40] and it's just awful and then on top of that

[00:37:44] without the leave, without the healthcare,

[00:37:47] low wage workers who are often people of color

[00:37:50] left completely on their own to navigate

[00:37:52] this whole postpartum period deciding

[00:37:55] if they can afford time off or not,

[00:37:58] figuring out if they can afford formula

[00:38:00] so that they can go back to work on top of childcare

[00:38:05] and then you get looked at the breakdown in America.

[00:38:08] Again, this is in America where hospitals

[00:38:10] that serve larger black populations

[00:38:12] are less likely to offer help and support

[00:38:14] in breastfeeding and are more likely to introduce formula.

[00:38:18] Black babies are much more likely

[00:38:19] to be born prematurely so in 2019,

[00:38:23] 14% of black mothers gave birth prematurely

[00:38:26] compared to 9% of white mothers

[00:38:28] and all of this is a huge barrier to breastfeeding.

[00:38:31] And again in communities of color

[00:38:33] there's kind of deserts for support groups

[00:38:36] and lactation services and then as you've mentioned

[00:38:39] you can't touch upon any of this

[00:38:41] without talking about the generational trauma

[00:38:43] that exists undoubtedly exists within black bodies

[00:38:47] from the forced wet nursing and the enslavement.

[00:38:50] So yeah, it's dire there especially.

[00:38:54] Yeah, yeah.

[00:38:56] And I mean, things in the UK

[00:38:58] obviously we have across the board rights to leave,

[00:39:01] rights to maternity pay if you qualify,

[00:39:05] rights free healthcare access

[00:39:07] to those kinds of things and support.

[00:39:09] But I have to say, we have our issues here

[00:39:11] with recent reports, the Embrace report

[00:39:13] which looked at health outcomes for black and brown women

[00:39:18] who are more likely to die within the perinatal period.

[00:39:23] And so we have huge disparities here

[00:39:26] and problems with the sort of the institutional racism

[00:39:28] and problems within maternal healthcare here as well.

[00:39:32] And it's something that I wanted to be very careful

[00:39:35] about talking about in my book

[00:39:36] around the question of formula that you bought up

[00:39:38] and it becomes a very pertinent question

[00:39:40] when we're thinking about women going back to work

[00:39:42] or women choosing saying breastfeeding

[00:39:44] is just not the right option for me.

[00:39:46] In thinking about formula, I realized that

[00:39:48] for much of my life I've conflated the formula industry

[00:39:52] and the marketing formula with the product of formula.

[00:39:55] And I think doing the research,

[00:39:58] I'm so grateful that we have formula,

[00:40:01] that we are aware of hygiene and sterilization

[00:40:04] and that we have lovely bottles

[00:40:06] that are not made of glass.

[00:40:09] So it used to be.

[00:40:10] But I think the fact that access to formula,

[00:40:13] I think it's a health product.

[00:40:15] It should be something that is not something

[00:40:17] that has to be paid for,

[00:40:18] that is not something that is a commercial product.

[00:40:21] And we've seen the problems over here

[00:40:24] with the cost of living crisis,

[00:40:25] issues around parents being able to afford to buy formula

[00:40:29] and then having to kind of water it down

[00:40:31] or not use sufficient quantities of it,

[00:40:34] which again is deeply disturbing

[00:40:36] and completely immoral as a society

[00:40:39] that parents are forced to do that

[00:40:41] and they aren't able to access the formula they need.

[00:40:44] And then obviously in North America

[00:40:45] with the shortages of formula

[00:40:47] and those kind of supply issues and problems with that.

[00:40:50] And it shows how deeply connected,

[00:40:52] how we feed our babies is

[00:40:54] to so many other intersections of society.

[00:40:58] And you talked about kind of reproductive rights as well.

[00:41:00] And I think that's very important

[00:41:02] to draw those parallels.

[00:41:03] Mm-hmm, absolutely.

[00:41:05] And yeah, thank you for bringing all of that up with Formulax.

[00:41:08] That's all really, really good points.

[00:41:11] Before we get into the future where we go from here,

[00:41:14] the learnings, there's one more problem I want to bring up

[00:41:20] because I can't not read this sentence from your book

[00:41:24] because again it's one of those surprising unsurprising

[00:41:27] and this has to do with

[00:41:28] the perception of breastfeeding in public.

[00:41:32] At least a third of the UK population

[00:41:35] thinks breastfeeding in public is wrong

[00:41:38] and more people think it's preferable

[00:41:40] for a baby to be fed in a toilet

[00:41:42] than at a table in a restaurant.

[00:41:45] In a toilet, people prefer a woman to do this

[00:41:50] in a toilet than in public.

[00:41:52] And I just, yeah, one I'm purposefully saying that slowly

[00:41:56] to let it all sink in

[00:41:58] even though listeners will be unsurprised about this.

[00:42:02] But I'd love to just hear, I don't know your thoughts on it

[00:42:05] and also if from all of your research and anything

[00:42:08] there's any way to help us understand why

[00:42:11] people are so repulsed at something

[00:42:14] that they also see as incredibly natural

[00:42:17] and beautiful and all the other things.

[00:42:19] Like how do we hold these two?

[00:42:21] Right, yeah.

[00:42:22] This is the kind of the bind that we exist within

[00:42:25] not only I think around breastfeeding and breast milk

[00:42:28] but also just experiences as women in the world

[00:42:32] we are kind of always caught in that bind

[00:42:34] and our bodies being viewed as disgusting or abject

[00:42:38] for doing things that they do.

[00:42:40] But yes, so yeah, breastfeeding in public

[00:42:44] still something that is kind of up for debate.

[00:42:48] You know, in the UK we have laws protecting

[00:42:50] somebody's right to breastfeed in a public space

[00:42:53] or in restaurant or in public transport.

[00:42:55] Yet still there is newspaper article

[00:42:58] after newspaper article of women being asked to cover up

[00:43:02] women being asked to leave.

[00:43:04] There was a story quite recently in a museum in Cambridge

[00:43:07] where a woman was asked not to feed

[00:43:09] and she was in a gallery space not to feed

[00:43:12] because there was no food or drink allowed

[00:43:14] in the museum or something.

[00:43:16] I saw that.

[00:43:17] It happens, it's just as an ongoing issue

[00:43:21] and so when you become a parent yourself

[00:43:24] I remember feeling so anxious about feeding in public

[00:43:26] for the first time and every time I did thereafter

[00:43:30] always being on kind of high alert of like

[00:43:32] is this the time that I'm gonna be asked to leave?

[00:43:35] Is this the moment where I can get out

[00:43:36] some of the self-righteous anger that I have

[00:43:39] by telling somebody that actually my baby's hungry

[00:43:41] I'm gonna feed my baby.

[00:43:44] But I think it goes back to this idea

[00:43:48] that many people view it preferable for us

[00:43:51] to breastfeed in a toilet because somehow breast milk

[00:43:54] is some kind of contagion

[00:43:57] and I've seen people making the comparison

[00:44:00] saying well I wouldn't urinate in public

[00:44:03] or I wouldn't defecate in a swimming pool.

[00:44:07] So making it out of here.

[00:44:08] Because it's a bodily fluid, right?

[00:44:10] And so and again you're being trapped

[00:44:13] in that it's the best thing you can do for your baby

[00:44:16] that narrative that gets really pushed on you.

[00:44:19] And at the same time we don't wanna see it.

[00:44:22] Don't you dare leak, make sure you've got your breast pads in.

[00:44:26] We do not wanna see your baby feeding.

[00:44:27] We don't wanna think about it because it's also disgusting.

[00:44:31] And that plays out historically as well.

[00:44:33] As I said earlier, this idea that breast milk

[00:44:35] was menstrual blood transformed.

[00:44:38] So it was seen as having this kind of holy divine

[00:44:43] potential that was good stuff, it's magical stuff

[00:44:45] but it's also a bodily fluid from a woman's body.

[00:44:49] Therefore it is abject, it is disgusting.

[00:44:53] We don't wanna think about our bodies leaking.

[00:44:56] I think there's also something about the intimacy of the act

[00:44:59] between a mother and child

[00:45:00] that some people can find discomforting.

[00:45:04] And then of course as I said

[00:45:05] this distinction between the maternal and the sexual

[00:45:08] and this confusion we have over the breast.

[00:45:11] And many people do not want to be confronted

[00:45:14] with the possibility that a breast can be sexual

[00:45:16] and maternal, sometimes at the same time

[00:45:19] that poses a real problem I think for us culturally.

[00:45:22] So how do we move forward beyond this?

[00:45:26] I mean, I wanna ask you about some of the specific things

[00:45:30] that you found in your historical search

[00:45:32] but I guess just more pointedly, do you have any ideas?

[00:45:37] Do you have any thoughts about how we overcome

[00:45:41] the stigma and how we move into the next generation

[00:45:46] not just evolving to a different,

[00:45:49] I mean it's always gonna be a social construct, right?

[00:45:52] That's gonna be hard to get rid of

[00:45:53] but the type of construct where it's more aligned

[00:45:57] with an authentic experience for that individual person

[00:46:01] unless at the will of the collective society,

[00:46:05] politics, science and all of that.

[00:46:08] I mean, I think one of the first things is to do

[00:46:11] what you do on this podcast for example

[00:46:13] and to keep telling stories

[00:46:14] and to keep talking about these things.

[00:46:16] And I always said very early on with this book

[00:46:20] that I think one of the things when you're writing on issues

[00:46:25] sort of women's issues which have you just niche subjects

[00:46:28] quite often there is a kind of view of,

[00:46:30] well we don't need any more books on breastfeeding

[00:46:32] because now we've got a book on breastfeeding.

[00:46:34] Well no, we have one book

[00:46:36] and oh well there's lots of books

[00:46:38] but there's not enough and there needs to be more

[00:46:41] and there needs to be more written by,

[00:46:45] across the board of a diversity of voices.

[00:46:48] And so we can really interrogate what that experience is.

[00:46:51] I think for so long there's been this kind of tyranny

[00:46:55] for women to kind of just get on with it

[00:46:57] to not talk about these experiences,

[00:47:00] to not share them because somehow it could be seen

[00:47:03] as maybe that it detracts from the love

[00:47:05] that you have from your child

[00:47:06] if you talk about the difficulties maybe of it

[00:47:09] or people don't wanna hear about it or whatever.

[00:47:12] And so I think we have to just keep telling

[00:47:14] our different stories, trying to connect to the past,

[00:47:18] trying to say it intersects across so many different

[00:47:22] kind of points of class, race, gender, sexuality

[00:47:26] and those kinds of things

[00:47:27] but it also intersects with other issues

[00:47:30] around reproductive rights,

[00:47:31] issues of women in public space

[00:47:34] because I write and I think a lot about,

[00:47:36] we talk about feeding in public for example.

[00:47:39] And I realized when I was breastfeeding in public

[00:47:42] I was breastfeeding in public for the first time

[00:47:44] as a mother but I was bringing with me all of this baggage

[00:47:48] 35 years of being a woman in the public sphere

[00:47:51] in public space where we know we're being scrutinized,

[00:47:54] we know we're constantly being objectified,

[00:47:56] we know that we're not safe.

[00:47:59] We're cat called when we're 12 years old

[00:48:01] and we're in our school uniform and that continues.

[00:48:04] And breastfeeding in public feeds into

[00:48:08] that conversation as well of just what it is

[00:48:11] to be a non cis male in the public sphere.

[00:48:15] I wish that there was an easy answer to it all

[00:48:18] but I think it is just about pointing out these things,

[00:48:21] challenging them, trying to work together

[00:48:24] and say this isn't just an issue for women with babies.

[00:48:28] It's a bigger issue

[00:48:29] and it's an issue that society should care about.

[00:48:32] And actually it has economic benefits as well

[00:48:35] because we talk about the lack of government investment,

[00:48:38] the lack of support and help available to new parents

[00:48:42] but breastfeeding has a huge economic value.

[00:48:45] The World Health Organization estimates

[00:48:47] that every $1 invested in supporting breastfeeding

[00:48:52] yields $35 in economic benefits.

[00:48:56] So $1, $35 in benefits.

[00:48:59] Now I would hate for that kind of to be taken

[00:49:04] to create a world where all women now have to breastfeed

[00:49:08] their babies for the good of the economics

[00:49:10] or whatever women should have a choice

[00:49:13] and thank God that we do have choice

[00:49:15] in how we feed our children.

[00:49:17] But the onus should not be put on the individual parent.

[00:49:21] It is something structural

[00:49:22] and it's something that society needs

[00:49:24] to care about more broadly.

[00:49:26] Which is again just a recurring theme

[00:49:28] with absolutely everything that we talk about

[00:49:31] on this podcast.

[00:49:32] Don't blame the woman,

[00:49:33] it's not the woman's job to fix it.

[00:49:35] Gotta zoom out, gotta look at the structures and systems

[00:49:38] and similarly don't look at necessarily the individual man,

[00:49:42] look at the systems and structures

[00:49:44] and all the way around.

[00:49:46] So stories and everything that you've laid out

[00:49:49] and not to take us too far back

[00:49:51] since we've already kind of gone back in time

[00:49:53] but in all of your looking back and history and art

[00:49:58] I'm wondering if there's anything that you learn

[00:50:01] that you feel we can all learn

[00:50:03] from what you found from the ancient ceramic bottles

[00:50:07] and the Greek mythology

[00:50:09] and the Victorian nipple shields and everything else.

[00:50:13] I mean, all of that was revelatory to me.

[00:50:15] Victorian nipple shields made of tin and ivory,

[00:50:19] baby bottles made of beautiful glass

[00:50:22] but in the Victorian period they would,

[00:50:24] you only have to wash the teat every three weeks

[00:50:28] and you're like, oh, that's disgusting.

[00:50:30] The baby bottles were something that just really

[00:50:34] because I was writing this book

[00:50:35] whilst I was breastfeeding.

[00:50:37] So I was going through it whilst I was working on the book.

[00:50:41] And so I was dealing with my own very kind of difficult

[00:50:45] and mixed feelings around bottle feeding my own son

[00:50:49] and how that made me feel about myself

[00:50:50] and as a good mother in this institution of motherhood

[00:50:55] and all of those things.

[00:50:57] And then I came across ceramic baby bottles

[00:50:59] that started appearing,

[00:51:02] the earliest example is about 7,000 years old in Europe

[00:51:05] and recent studies have looked at these bottles

[00:51:09] and found that they actually contained traces

[00:51:11] of animal milk and human milk.

[00:51:15] Now these bottles were found in infant graves.

[00:51:18] Is that just because that's where archaeologists dig?

[00:51:20] So that's where we find the evidence

[00:51:23] or was this an act of giving these babies

[00:51:26] something for the afterlife?

[00:51:27] It made me think about the nurturing

[00:51:29] and the care and the nourishing

[00:51:31] and how deep those feelings are.

[00:51:34] And I felt connected to this parent 7,000 years ago.

[00:51:38] Maybe they'd fed their baby.

[00:51:39] Maybe they were using bottles to,

[00:51:41] they probably were using bottles actually

[00:51:43] to kind of wean slightly older babies and infants.

[00:51:46] So they were certainly using bottles for babies,

[00:51:48] but also just that sense of deep care and love

[00:51:52] and the kind of universality of that really wrong tree.

[00:51:55] It made me feel much less alone in my new motherhood.

[00:51:58] It made me look at my own bottles

[00:52:00] drying on the kitchen worktop

[00:52:02] in a very, very different light.

[00:52:04] And it just connected me to something bigger.

[00:52:06] And I think that was the kind of most valuable part

[00:52:08] of that research.

[00:52:09] I really, really love that.

[00:52:11] That's kind of the question I wanted to start to end on

[00:52:15] is this, yeah, what you kind of invoke throughout the book,

[00:52:17] this idea of us being woven together through time and space.

[00:52:22] And I just want to read a couple lines.

[00:52:24] I was going to pick one, but they're all good.

[00:52:25] So I'm going to read a few of them

[00:52:27] that really pull out this idea.

[00:52:29] So you wrote, there may have been nights

[00:52:31] when we felt alone,

[00:52:32] but we were always stitched together

[00:52:34] into a vast and elaborate tapestry.

[00:52:37] Single threads can be fragile,

[00:52:39] but when woven together, a textile is strong.

[00:52:43] And then you also said that you keep coming back

[00:52:44] to this idea of threads and weaving

[00:52:46] as if trying to construct something bigger

[00:52:48] out of my own experience, as you just said.

[00:52:51] Because milk in whichever way it is to be delivered

[00:52:55] is the white ink that writes our origin stories,

[00:52:58] which binds us all together generation after generation,

[00:53:01] woman with woman, generation with generation.

[00:53:05] Absolutely love that.

[00:53:06] I think it's so beautiful

[00:53:08] and really goes to show the power that we have.

[00:53:12] Exactly as you point out,

[00:53:14] single threads can be fragile,

[00:53:15] but when woven together, a textile is strong.

[00:53:19] So kind of a two-part question

[00:53:22] because you talk a lot about the politics of milk

[00:53:25] and we've really, we have gotten into that a bit today,

[00:53:29] but one thing that you mentioned

[00:53:30] is mothering's potential

[00:53:33] as a destabilizing threat to patriarchal domination.

[00:53:37] We've talked a lot about how politics

[00:53:39] and social norms and all of this kind of influence mothering

[00:53:42] and the way we see breastfeeding,

[00:53:44] but I'm wondering if you can talk to that point of why

[00:53:47] you think mothering is seen as such a threat?

[00:53:50] Was it because these single threads when woven together

[00:53:54] are so strong?

[00:53:55] Is it because of that

[00:53:56] or what your kind of thoughts is there?

[00:53:58] And then the community aspect

[00:53:59] and how you see us as powerful

[00:54:02] because of that interwoven connection.

[00:54:04] I think there's a number of ways it can be destabilizing.

[00:54:07] I think in one sense,

[00:54:08] it comes back to that idea

[00:54:09] of woven together with stronger.

[00:54:11] And I think it's very evident to me

[00:54:14] that patriarchy fears the power that we have

[00:54:19] in the way that they work so hard to divide us.

[00:54:24] And we've talked a lot about breastfeeding

[00:54:26] and we've talked about formula

[00:54:27] and we've talked about the different ways

[00:54:29] that those choices we make

[00:54:31] when we're lucky enough to have choices

[00:54:33] because I realized that, you know

[00:54:34] for some people formula is not a choice

[00:54:36] or breastfeeding is not a choice.

[00:54:37] But the fact of how we feed our children

[00:54:40] is often used as a way of dividing us, right?

[00:54:42] Is if we're gonna be in camps

[00:54:44] and you know the breastfeeding mom

[00:54:46] is gonna judge the formula feeding mom

[00:54:48] or the bottle feeding mom

[00:54:50] is gonna judge the breastfeeding mom in public.

[00:54:53] And when you talk to women

[00:54:54] and I've talked to many, many mothers

[00:54:57] and non-binary parents

[00:54:58] as part of the research for this book,

[00:54:59] you realize that that fear of being judged

[00:55:03] and that fear that another parent

[00:55:06] might think you're judging them

[00:55:08] is so prevalent

[00:55:10] and I think that it is a tool used to divide us, right?

[00:55:15] But I think the reality is

[00:55:17] that actually if we all came together

[00:55:19] and said like, it doesn't matter how you fed your baby

[00:55:21] you did it your way.

[00:55:23] I'm doing it my way.

[00:55:24] We need to come together to support each other.

[00:55:26] We need that community,

[00:55:27] that word that you did bring up

[00:55:29] to demand better.

[00:55:31] I think the patriarchy fears us

[00:55:33] and I think we can see how they fear us

[00:55:35] and you can see it over history

[00:55:37] in the way that they try to control us,

[00:55:39] that they try to dominate our bodies,

[00:55:41] take away our bodily control,

[00:55:43] configure our bodies in the cultural realm

[00:55:46] as something that is disgusting.

[00:55:49] And you see it playing out in kind of horror movies

[00:55:51] and all sorts where the lactating body

[00:55:54] is like the most abject, disgusting thing

[00:55:58] or asking a grown adult to try breast milk

[00:56:01] is seen as such a squeamish to boo thing.

[00:56:04] I think trying to reclaim our bodies

[00:56:07] and saying actually there is a sense of abundance

[00:56:11] in all of this,

[00:56:12] in the way that the fluids that our bodies produce

[00:56:15] there is abundance and potential.

[00:56:18] And I think that is the destabilizing force.

[00:56:21] Is that creative potential?

[00:56:23] And I mean creative in a very, very broad sense.

[00:56:26] I don't just mean in terms of gestating a baby

[00:56:29] or whatever it's a really kind of

[00:56:31] we have a generative potential.

[00:56:34] Yes.

[00:56:35] The interwoven textile,

[00:56:37] I think that's a really good analogy

[00:56:38] and a good imagery to imagine us all

[00:56:42] when talking about breastfeeding

[00:56:44] and the way milk connects us,

[00:56:45] but also just outside of that.

[00:56:47] And when women and when people come together,

[00:56:51] how much stronger we all are together.

[00:56:53] So it was really beautiful

[00:56:54] something in our woven throughout the whole book.

[00:56:57] So I'm wondering then just kind of straightforward

[00:57:00] talking to the listeners.

[00:57:02] If there's anyone listening who's perhaps a new mother

[00:57:05] or may decide to become one one day,

[00:57:08] anything you might say to them

[00:57:09] as they begin to navigate this world of breastfeeding?

[00:57:13] It's I find this question so challenging

[00:57:16] because it's so hard to know in retrospect

[00:57:18] what I would have found helpful.

[00:57:20] Now I have the benefit of hindsight

[00:57:22] but what would I have found helpful at the beginning

[00:57:24] or before?

[00:57:25] I think just remember that you're not alone

[00:57:29] in any of this,

[00:57:30] that you are not an isolated being in the world.

[00:57:33] Underneath a bell jar,

[00:57:35] you are connected and the experiences that you have

[00:57:38] you can find support for those.

[00:57:40] There is support, find it

[00:57:43] and yeah, just kind of do the,

[00:57:46] that's kind of it.

[00:57:47] Like find your community somewhere,

[00:57:49] whether that's online,

[00:57:51] whether that's in person

[00:57:53] but just know that you're not alone

[00:57:54] in what you're doing and seek support

[00:57:55] and that breastfeeding sometimes is just a dance

[00:57:59] that you have to learn with your baby

[00:58:00] because they have to learn how to do it too

[00:58:02] and it's a relationship that you're navigating

[00:58:04] and it can take a little bit of time.

[00:58:06] So yeah, ask for help.

[00:58:09] Beautiful and you're not alone

[00:58:10] and you can also read Joanna's book

[00:58:12] and discover you're not alone as well.

[00:58:14] Feel connected not just to those currently

[00:58:17] but generations past as well.

[00:58:19] If people take one thing away

[00:58:21] from this conversation with you today

[00:58:23] what would you want it to be?

[00:58:25] I think that I would want them to realize

[00:58:28] that how we feed our babies

[00:58:29] is something that matters to us all.

[00:58:32] It matters to humanity.

[00:58:34] It is not just an issue for people

[00:58:36] who happen to be parents

[00:58:38] or who happen to be mothers.

[00:58:39] As I said at the beginning,

[00:58:40] we were all babies once.

[00:58:42] It is something that intersects

[00:58:43] across so many different parts

[00:58:45] of our lives, of society, of culture

[00:58:48] and I think that it would probably be very illuminating

[00:58:53] for men to read more women stories.

[00:58:58] So shame this plug,

[00:59:00] buy a copy of my book for a man in your life.

[00:59:04] Yes, no shame there.

[00:59:07] Definitely, I second that.

[00:59:08] Well, that is an excellent note to end on.

[00:59:11] Buy a copy for yourself and buy for two men in your life.

[00:59:15] I'm gonna up the ante there.

[00:59:18] Joanna, thank you so much for being on today.

[00:59:21] It was an absolute pleasure.

[00:59:22] Thank you for your work

[00:59:23] and your book and speaking with me.

[00:59:25] Thank you so much for having me.

[00:59:27] It's been a pleasure.

[00:59:32] Thanks for listening.

[00:59:34] The story of woman is a one woman operation

[00:59:36] run by me, Anna Steclain.

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