Cassidy, Tanya M.
(2012)
Making “Milky Matches”
Globalization, Maternal Trust and “Lactivist” Online Networking.
Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, 3 (1).
pp. 226-240.
ISSN 1923-4139
Abstract
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.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Motherhood; Globalization; Maternal Trust; Lactivist; Online Networking; global breastfeeding activist; milk sharing; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology |
| Item ID: |
5908 |
| Depositing User: |
Tanya Cassidy
|
| Date Deposited: |
24 Feb 2015 16:35 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement |
| Publisher: |
Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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