13 Bio-Intimate Economies of Breastmilk ... 337construct themselves as ethical. Moreover, by sharing their ‘liquid gold’
breastmilk, their actions are in line with contemporary understandings
of moral motherhood insofar as they recognise the benefits of breast-
feeding and the corresponding risks of using infant formula. In the
infant feeding debates, good mothers know that breast is best; if they
cannot breastfeed their infants, they will source donor milk as a second
best option. For mothers who express breastmilk for others, the gift is
self-sacrificial. Donor breastmilk is given without return, excepting the
acknowledgement of maternal debt to the donor, who seeks recognition
for breastmilk expression and its distribution as physically hard wrought
and time-consuming.
Breastmilk donors may not be co-present or physically close to their
recipients; they may not be biologically or legally related. They are,
however, ‘emotionally aligned’ to the recipient through maternalist
affects of altruism and care, in much the same way that Kroløkke and
Petersen describe donors of reproductive gifts. The donors we have dis-
cussed in this chapter do not receive financial compensation for their
milk. From their perspective, this would debase the gift and diminish
the status of breastmilk as a sacred substance. Their primary concern
is to help babies in need, thereby supporting other mothers and their
families. Peer-milk sharers and NICU donors do not typically establish
long-term relationships with their recipients, due to confidentiality pro-
tocol or geographic distance. The fact that they do not ‘connect’ on an
ongoing face-to-face basis—even though they extend bio-intimate prac-
tices to the public domain that have historically been confined to the
private sphere—legitimises their moral identities as responsible ‘biologi-
cal citizens’ (Rose and Novas 2005 ).
Notes
- Theories of lactational heredity are an extreme example. Lactational
heredity is the belief that the moral character of the wet nurse and the
quality of her milk could influence the character of the child. - See Bartle ( 2010 ) and Carroll ( 2014 ) for extended discussions of this
transformation.