Introduction: Sharing Milk

This chapter provides original sociological thinking in order to bear on contemporary gender relations, divisions, and issues of concern to feminists. It analyzes human milk-sharing communities in a large metropolitan area in southeastern United States. It also describes the practices of milk-sharing, the meanings ascribed to human milk, and the labour involved in its production. The chapter builds on existing scholarship and theoretical frameworks to develop a model for understanding contemporary forms of bodily sharing. It explains how feeding of human milk to socially and biologically unrelated infants is a normal method of infant feeding documented throughout human history and in societies around the world.

Theorizing Milk Sharing

This chapter highlights the ways in which milk-sharing encompasses an array of embodied and social practices through the experiences of a single mother named Anna. It explores how milk itself has an important material presence in Anna's story as she describes the ways she transports, stores, and handles it, alongside the deep emotional connection she experiences with it. It also shows human milk-sharing as a community practice and material that form a theoretical groundwork on various aspects of milk-sharing. The chapter references Étienne Wenger's communities of practice model to propose the notion of bio-communities of practice, which are characterized by bio-intimacy. It explains how bio-intimacy is interconnected with the materiality of human milk, particularly as an emotionally laden substance.