“Father’s Milk.” Indifference Leads to Insanity, Then Aiding and Abetting

An organization exists titled America’s Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. This Academy gained recognition most recently because of its publicizing of its new anthology of definitions relating to breastfeeding. The category of “men can do what women can do!”, exemplified by male swimmer Lia Thomas crushing women’s swimming records, has been expanded into directions that defy reality. America’s Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine asserts that, regarding the breastfeeding of infants, men can do it also! Indeed, the reality-bending Academy promotes what it categorizes as “father’s milk.”

The story originated with The Post Millennial (The Post), which broke the story: The article states: “The so-called transgender movement is trying to pretend reality can be ignored” and is forcing what the post describes as “its sick fantasy” on America. The Post asserts the latest example of this assault on reality is the “gender inclusive” language guide from The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) suggesting that hospitals and lactation consultants add the phrase “father’s milk” to their vocabulary.

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright told The Post Millennial: “This document was sent to me by a friend whose wife is a hospital nurse for new moms and their babies.,” Wright continued: “He said this new ‘inclusive terminology’ is being implemented at her hospital, and that nurses and other health professionals are being required to ask each patient what terms they wish to have used when discussing their care.”

From beast to chest, the rhetoric evolves. The guideline also includes words “chestfeeding,” “human milk feeding,” and “lactating person” to use in place of “traditional terms” like breastfeeding, nursing mother and breast. See “Father’s milk.”

The ABM guideline offered a video some, if not many or even most people would find disturbing on one or more levels. Some Twitter comments referred to the actions of the two people “chestfeeding” an infant as child abuse. The video involves a man who purports to be a woman and his partner, a woman who thinks she’s a man, who recently gave birth (because that’s what women do).  The man takes that poor, screaming, hungry little baby and tries to nurse it on his male breast. Predictably, the effort is unsuccessful because “father’s milk” does not exist.

Also embedded in the Post article is a Table 1: Suggested Terms in Breastfeeding and Human Lactation. Traditional terms, now outdated and deemed offense by the ilk of the Academy, such as mother, father, birth mother, are re-formulated into “Gender-inclusive terms” such as gestational parent, mothers and gestational parents. The word “breastfeeding” becomes one of several descriptive words in the upper-body category, chestfeeding, lactating, and human milk feeding. Breastmilk is transmogrified into “father’s milk. See the embedded Table 1.

The Post article posits that “these are dangerous, delusional people” who could benefit from mental health care. The Post concludes: “But rather than giving them the mental health care they need and gently marginalizing them as they deserve to be, we are turning our society upside-down to give their sick fantasies institutional support and power.” Whatever one’s position or ideology on transgenderism, generally, the trenchant question arises: is this a healthy way to treat infants?