Making “Milky Matches” Globalization, Maternal Trust and “Lactivist” Online Networking

One of the most recent, and global breastfeeding activist or lactation activist movements was launched on the Internet in 2010. This mother-to-mother, sometimes called peer-to-peer, milk sharing Internet based networking does not support the selling of breastmilk, but facilitates, on a global scale, the establishment of local relationships. Issues of trust and exchange are key, as are questions of medicalization or biomedicalization, secrecy about cross-nursing, as well as the historical pejorative demonization of the lactating body. Discourses from government authorities, media outlets, and breastfeeding organizations have often created a sense of antagonism between this type of milk sharing, and the older form of donor human milk banking. However those who study these two visions argue for a synergy between the global Internet based milk sharing community and the donor human milk banking community as an important next step within the global culture of breastfeeding, and that synergy is not only possible, but necessary to ensure the primary interests of mothers and infants. As the mother of two infants, one of whom received donor human milk, while the other developed a fatal disease linked to lack of exclusive breastmilk feeding, I am particularly in favour of a world where all infants have the right to breastmilk, and that this right is not the sole responsibility of a single maternal body. Arguing that in the ideal world, we recognize it takes a village to feed that child

Race to the Park: Simmel, The Stranger and The State

In 1909, Georg Simmel opens his essay entitled ‘Bridge and Door’ in the following way, ‘[t]he image of external things possesses for us the ambiguous dimension that in external nature everything can be considered to be connected, but also as separated’ (Simmel, 1997: 170). Ambivalence, meaning occupying two spaces at one and the same time, provides a stabilising social paradigm, and not a provisional condition of uncertainty. This paper discusses a socio-political drama in Ireland which makes active use of an ambivalent rhetoric, specifically linking notions of transcending boundaries

Making “Milky Matches” Globalization, Maternal Trust and “Lactivist” Online Networking

One of the most recent, and global breastfeeding activist or lactation activist movements was launched on the Internet in 2010. This mother-to-mother, sometimes called peer-to-peer, milk sharing Internet based networking does not support the selling of breastmilk, but facilitates, on a global scale, the establishment of local relationships. Issues of trust and exchange are key, as are questions of medicalization or biomedicalization, secrecy about cross-nursing, as well as the historical pejorative demonization of the lactating body. Discourses from government authorities, media outlets, and breastfeeding organizations have often created a sense of antagonism between this type of milk sharing, and the older form of donor human milk banking. However those who study these two visions argue for a synergy between the global Internet based milk sharing community and the donor human milk banking community as an important next step within the global culture of breastfeeding, and that synergy is not only possible, but necessary to ensure the primary interests of mothers and infants. As the mother of two infants, one of whom received donor human milk, while the other developed a fatal disease linked to lack of exclusive breastmilk feeding, I am particularly in favour of a world where all infants have the right to breastmilk, and that this right is not the sole responsibility of a single maternal body. Arguing that in the ideal world, we recognize it takes a village to feed that child

Banking on Milk

Banking on Milk takes the reader on a journey through the everyday life of donor human milk banking across the United Kingdom (UK) and beyond, asking questions such as the following: Why do people decide to donate? How do parents of recipients hear about human milk? How does milk donation impact on lifestyle choices? Chapters record the practical everyday reality of work in a milk bank by drawing on extensive ethnographic observations and sensitive interview data from donors, mothers of recipients and the staff of four different milk banks from across the UK, and visits to milk banks across Europe and North America. It discusses the ongoing pressures to do with supply, demand and distribution. An empirically informed ""ethnography of the contemporary"", where both biosociality and biopower abound, this book includes an exploration of how milk banks evolved from registering wet nurses with hospitals, showing how a regulatory culture of medical authority began to quantify and organize human milk as a commodity. This book is a valuable read for all those with an interest in breastfeeding or organ and tissue donation from a range of fields, including midwifery, sociology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies and public health

Banking on Milk

Banking on Milk takes the reader on a journey through the everyday life of donor human milk banking across the United Kingdom (UK) and beyond, asking questions such as the following: Why do people decide to donate? How do parents of recipients hear about human milk? How does milk donation impact on lifestyle choices? Chapters record the practical everyday reality of work in a milk bank by drawing on extensive ethnographic observations and sensitive interview data from donors, mothers of recipients and the staff of four different milk banks from across the UK, and visits to milk banks across Europe and North America. It discusses the ongoing pressures to do with supply, demand and distribution. An empirically informed ""ethnography of the contemporary"", where both biosociality and biopower abound, this book includes an exploration of how milk banks evolved from registering wet nurses with hospitals, showing how a regulatory culture of medical authority began to quantify and organize human milk as a commodity. This book is a valuable read for all those with an interest in breastfeeding or organ and tissue donation from a range of fields, including midwifery, sociology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies and public health

The New Irish Question: Citizenship, Motherhood and the Politics of Life Itself

In 2004, voters in the Republic of Ireland supported a constitutional amendment removing the automatic right to Irish citizenship by birth in favor of granting citizenship through a combination of 'blood' and residence rights. The referendum attracted enormous public attention, especially to the perceived attempt to restrict citizenship claims arising from asylum seekers with Irish hom children. Significant scholarly attention has also been paid to the role of the Irish state, and the relationship between the state and 'race'. This article critically reviews this literature and goes beyond it in several ways: first, we re-open discussion of Irish citizenship through a critical examination of its legal underpinnings; second, we trace over the public debates in finer detail; and, third, we show the ways in which Irish citizenship is being reconfigured by broader international forces

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on North American milk banks

This study aims to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on human milk banking services in North America, with a focus on the United States. We triangulated questionnaire data with interviews and text-based website data. Of the 30 human milk bank services from which data were obtained, the majority faced substantial internal organization change in terms of staffing and protocols and experienced financial hardship in particular because of decreases in donor human milk orders. At the same time, most banks reported an increase in their numbers of donors and in the volume of milk collected. These results show that the pandemic significantly affected the way in which many North American milk banks operate, some lactating mothers donate their milk and, at least during the first few months of the crisis, certain hospitals' donor human milk ordering patterns changed. It suggests in particular that stay-at-home orders and the turn to remote work created the potential for a surge in human milk available for donation as a number of parents no longer needed their surplus for their own children. Legal and policy reform should focus on replicating the positive effects of the pandemic on breastfeeding by guaranteeing paid parental leave and flexible work conditions. Initiatives should also aim at counteracting its negative effects by mandating the insurance coverage of donor human milk, supporting milk banks financially and, more generally, integrating lactation and human milk banking services within the health system