300 F. Giles
moments’ against which adequate mothering is measured, despite its
much longer presence in human lives ( 2008 : 67). Breastmilk is therefore
conceived of normatively as a virtuous gift delivered duty-bound from
the mother to her child, ideally for that child alone, and for a discreet
period of time, as a gesture of fidelity to the exclusion of other food
types, other food sources, or other motivations to breastfeed.^8
In summary, the concept of exclusive breastfeeding has arisen along-
side an ideal of exclusionary mothering and the medical rarefication
of milk’s biochemical properties. It has coincided with the rise of neo-
liberalism and the promotion of attachment parenting within relatively
isolated and private circumstances. Exclusive breastfeeding means not
just the feeding of breastmilk exclusively, without supplementation, but
also that the source of breastmilk is exclusively the biological mother’s,
without help from the bodies of others (nor, at times, others’ resources
or support). The biological, cisgender female mother is upheld as both
the single producer and the single provider of breastmilk for her child.
Trevor MacDonald’s Story
In Where’s the Mother? MacDonald becomes pregnant to his husband
and intends to use formula to feed their baby once it is born. Like
many transgender men, he had undergone chest surgery after a period
of hormone therapy, but retained his female reproductive organs.
MacDonald’s chest surgery fulfilled a longstanding ambition to have his
breasts surgically removed, an operation that was successful in contour-
ing a more conventionally masculine chest for him, and which contrib-
uted significantly to his achieving a sense of belonging in his own body.
Ironically, it was only after this surgery that, he writes, ‘I had new space
in my soul to care for others’ ( 2016 : 44), and he and his partner started
to plan a family.
While pregnant, MacDonald begins researching the extensive parent-
ing literature and learns that the physiology of a baby’s gut in the first
six months of its life is poorly suited to formula. He therefore commits
to using breastmilk. Conscious ‘that even perfectly equipped cisgender
women often find breastfeeding terribly difficult’, MacDonald decides
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