When Joanna Wolfarth was pregnant with her first child, she assumed she would breastfeed, as her mother had fed her. Yet she was unprepared for the startling realities of new motherhood. Then, just four weeks after the birth, she found herself back in hospital with an underweight baby, bewildered by inconsistent advice and overcome with feelings of guilt and isolation. Months later, her cultural historian''s impulse led her to look to the past for guidance. What she discovered, neglected in the archives, amazed and reassured her. By piecing together cultural debris - from fragments of ancient baby bottles to eighteenth-century breast pumps, from the Palaeolithic Woman of Willendorf figurine to the poignantly inventive work of Louise Bourgeois and from mythical accounts of the creation of the Milky Way to advice found in Victorian medical manuals - Joanna began to understand how feeding our babies can be culturally, economically and physiologically determined as well as deeply personal and emotive. Using the arc of her own experience, Joanna takes us on an intimate journey of discovery beyond mother and baby, asking how the world views caregivers, their bodies, their labour and their communal bonds. By bringing together art, social histories, philosophy, folk wisdom and contemporary interviews with women from across the world, Milk reveals how infant feeding has been represented and repressed, celebrated and censured. In doing so, Joanna charts previously unexplored territory and offers comfort and solace to anyone who has fed or will feed a child.

Vorwort
The first major work of popular history on breastfeeding, exploring how it has been represented and repressed, celebrated and censured

Autorentext
Joanna Wolfarth is an art historian. Previously visiting lecturer in Southeast Asian Art at SOAS, University of London, she now teaches History of Art at The Open University. Milk is her first book.

Klappentext

**- 'Illuminating . . . an important book' Sunday Times

• 'A fascinating journey through the social, cultural and historical meanings of breastfeeding. A sublime book' Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women
• 'Erudite, intimate and compelling . . . a long-overdue history' Leah Hazard, author of Hard Pushed
• 'A story for us all'** *BBC History Magazine

*Milk is elemental. It is the first thing we look for at birth and, for most, it is the first substance to touch our tongues after we enter the world. It is the promise of nourishment, of care, of life.

Using the arc of her own experience, cultural historian Joanna Wolfarth takes us on an intimate journey of discovery beyond mother and baby, asking how the world views caregivers, their bodies, their labour and their communal bonds. By bringing together art, social histories, philosophy, folk wisdom and contemporary interviews with women from across the world, Milk reveals how infant feeding has been represented and repressed, celebrated and censured. In doing so, it charts previously unexplored territory - and offers comfort and solace to anyone who has fed or will feed a child.