Marketing Mothers' Milk: The Commodification of Breastfeeding and the New Markets for Breast Milk and Infant Formula

Abstract

Today breastfeeding, human breast milk, and its substitute - infant formula - are commodities. "Mother's milk" is marketed both literally and figuratively: as a good for sale, normative behavior, and a symbolic cure for much that is disturbing in twenty-first century America. This article asserts that this unacknowledged commodification of breast feeding and human milk is the result of a complex alliance among government, the medical profession, health care institutions, and manufacturers of infant formula, in which each institution profits at the expense of American women and their families.