You know how you might have a neighbour who grows zucchinis, and they pass you some over the fence, and then a few days later you pass over some zucchini bread? Or maybe you help your brother move house, and then a few years later he helps you move house? Or you know how your mum came over to help look after the older kids when you were busy with the newborn? You know that she doesn’t want or expect any payment, but as she gets older you might find yourself helping her with the yard work.
All these are example of the gift economy, and it’s how we functioned back in our hunter gatherer days and in small village living. We would provide our time and skills to others who we knew and cared about, without any expectation of them giving anything back, yet knowing that they would share their own time and skills back in turn.
You might expect me to say something like, ‘and then we invented money, and everything became a capitalist horror show’. It is true that money became necessary as societies grew larger and we could no longer rely on a gift economy to function, indicating in part that money is a symptom of a society lacking in trustworthy interactions. Yet many anthropologists agree that when money was first created, it wasn’t used to buy and sell material goods or pay someone for their services. It was used to put value on something more important – relationships. In his book, anthropologist David Graeber writes that money was “used to create, maintain, and otherwise reorganize relations between people: to arrange marriages, establish the paternity of children, head off feuds, console mourners at funerals, seek forgiveness in the case of crimes, negotiate treaties, acquire followers – almost anything but trade in yams, shovels, pigs, or jewelry”.
And while money is now used almost exclusively to buy and sell things – goods, time, experience – it is still used to place value on intangibles. For example, both a $20 handbag and a $2000 handbag perform the same function, are generally made from comparable materials, and have the same dimensions. Yet one is worth a lot more. Why? Simply because we’ve commonly determined that it is a status symbol to have a handbag from a designer company, and many people are willing to pay the high price for the status the bag confers.
Having a monetary system that assigns dollar values to things is handy. It allows us to make easy comparisons between different products (would I rather spend my $10 on one small tub of ice-cream or buy a few bags of liquorice?), have a sense for how valuable something is in terms of our time (that tropical holiday is worth 100 work hours), and enables investment (allowing us to build wealth over time).
Yet it has also shifted our focus. We now spend most of our childhoods studying to get a good job, then most of our adult lives slaving away at that good job. We work to have the money we need, and then we work more to have plenty of extra money for the things we want. We focus on buying things that signify our wealth. We are constantly chasing that promotion or new job that provides a bigger pay packet. We act as though we believe that money will buy us happiness. And we’ve also stopped valuing many of the things that don’t have a dollar amount assigned to them.
Consequently, it has also changed the way we engage in one of the most important and intense relationships we experience – that between mother and infant. We talk about taking maternity leave, as though looking after an infant is a ‘break’ from real work. Politicians talk about advancing gender equality in the same sentence as they talk about providing affordable childcare to get women back into the workforce. Some even talk about infant formula as though it is the ticket to getting fathers to provide an equal amount of caregiving. The unspoken message behind all of these conversations is that breastfeeding doesn’t matter, that caregiving isn’t as valuable as paid employment, and that mothering can be outsourced.
That’s why I loved this article published in Frontiers in Public Health in 2023, entitled “Breastfeeding and infant care as ‘sexed’ care work: reconsideration of the three Rs to enable women’s rights, economic empowerment, nutrition and health”.
Here’s my summary of the key points (with some added commentary):
Most attempts at gender equality focus on the Three Rs
The Three Rs is an established framework for moving towards gender equality in the division of unpaid care work. It involves Recognizing the care work that is performed and valuing it as having a widespread and long-term positive impact on society. Then measures are taken to Reduce the load (for example, by providing health services, access to clean water, outsourcing the care work etc.), or to Redistribute the work to other family members. These are important steps in bridging the gap between the unpaid work provided by women and that provided by men, ensuring greater equality.
Additionally, many economists and politicians believe that reducing and redistributing women’s unpaid childcare is particularly valuable as it enables women to participate more fully in the workforce, allowing them greater economic security. Policies such as parental leave and cheap childcare are often viewed through this lens.
However, in practice, these policies intensify the problem. When women re-enter the workforce with very young and breastfeeding children, they end up with less time for essential care work, leading them to multi-task, reduce sleep, and cut back on leisure activities.
Breastfeeding and young infant care doesn’t fit the Three Rs framework
While other caregiving tasks can be reduced and redistributed, breastfeeding should not be reduced and cannot be redistributed. Here’s why:
Breastfeeding is economically valuable
Breastmilk is valued at A$154 per litre (US$100) in Norway’s human milk banking system. It also meets criteria for measurement in a country’s GDP, yet it is not included in GDP estimates for most countries. This exclusion contributes to the invisibility of women’s unpaid care work. It also wrongly suggests that increased formula sales or medical treatment of illnesses that result from a lack of breastfeeding is economic progress.
The Mother’s Milk Tool highlights the economic contribution made to society by breastfeeding mothers. On a national level, it shows the economic risk of policies that impede breastfeeding. It can also be used on an individual basis, to help you calculate the economic value you have personally contributed to society through breastfeeding, and the amounts are astonishing (with just my youngest child, I’m looking at a contribution of A$61,057)!
Breastfeeding is intricately related to women’s lifelong health
Breastfeeding protects against anaemia, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, type II diabetes, and heart disease. Annually, around 98,000 maternal deaths can be attributed to stopping breastfeeding early.
Many mothers want to engage in breastfeeding and infant care
Some people believe that the only reason there is gender inequality in unpaid care work is because of centuries of brainwashing by the patriarchy. And while there is certainly a level of societally constructed expectations about the division of roles between men and women, this is not the whole picture.
During pregnancy, women’s brain literally change, priming them to bond with their infants. Post-birth, skin-to-skin contact promotes the release of oxytocin, a hormone which (in this context) promotes maternal affection. There are deep, primal, biological reasons for mothers wanting to spend time with their infants.
Then in a modern context, there is research showing that most women take all the paid maternity leave available to them. Additionally, many take all the paid parental leave they can in countries where parental leave is shared, bank their annual leave to use once their maternity leave runs out, and many even choose to extend their time at home through taking unpaid leave. Wanting to continue breastfeeding is one of the reasons women frequently nominated as to why they take as much leave as they possibly can.
Breastfeeding and infant care should be considered ‘sexed’ work rather than ‘gendered’ work
I can’t summarise it better than the authors did, so here’s a direct quote,
“We argue that like pregnancy and childbirth, breastfeeding and the direct care of infants should not be considered ‘gendered’ care work but instead conceptualized as ‘sexed’ care work- that is work that is a part of the female reproductive continuum. This would enable a proper value to be placed on breastfeeding as a reproductive right to be protected and supported rather than something that should be reduced in the name of gender equality.”
We don’t achieve gender equality by treating men and women the same. It would be like eliminating sex-based categories in the 100m sprint and then wondering why only men make it to the finals. Gender equality is achieved when we support men and women to run their own races. In terms of unpaid caregiving, that means that men and women should be taking on different, yet equitable, loads. Gender equality isn’t giving everyone the same opportunity (like giving fathers the opportunity to feed the baby at the cost of supporting breastfeeding). It is giving everyone the same outcome (like ensuring that both mother and father have time to bond with their baby, look after their own basic needs, have leisure time, and have economic security), even if the path to achieving those outcomes differs.
Valuing breastfeeding and infant care
The authors finish their article advocating for steps that countries can take to move towards adequately recognizing and valuing breastfeeding and infant care. While these steps are important, unless you’re a policy maker you personally won’t have much control over how these suggestions could be implemented. So instead, I’m going to highlight how you can leverage their suggestions on an individual level.
Maternity leave
Around the world, there have been numerous studies detailing the benefits to mothers from taking paid maternity leave, from increasing breastfeeding rates, reducing blood pressure, decreasing rates of breast and ovarian cancers, and lowering depression scores. Each one month increase in paid maternity leave is also associated with a 13% reduction in infant deaths.
The take home message? Take as much maternity leave as you possibly can. If you’re considering having a baby in the next few years, take some time to find out your company’s maternity leave provisions, and consider changing jobs if the maternity leave they offer is low. Look into if your government offers additional maternity leave (being mindful that it will probably be at a reduced rate). You can also consider stockpiling your annual leave or extending your maternity leave by taking it at half pay.
Paternity leave
Many countries have adopted a use-it-or-lose-it paternity leave scheme, where there is a portion of parental leave that can only be taken by fathers as the sole carer in one chunk. It might seem like a good idea to help women back into the workforce (thereby reducing the gender pay gap), as well as helping dads bond with their baby and take on a greater share of the unpaid work at home. However, there is no strong evidence that this type of paternity leave actually hits any of those goals in any significant way.
What has been shown to have an impact is flexible, simultaneous paternity leave. This form of paternity leave is associated with increased duration of breastfeeding, reduced childbirth complications, and reduced prescription of anti-anxiety medications for the mother. As for increasing emotional bonding and helping dads take on a greater share of housework, reducing total work hours and commuting time appears to have a greater long-term impact.
The take home message? Take your paternity leave but take it at the same time as maternity leave. Consider spacing it out flexibly rather than taking it in a solid chunk. And consider reducing your work hours or commuting time (however that might look like for you).
Own your contribution
As I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of ways that society and governments imply that breastfeeding and infant care is not important. The focus on getting mothers back to work can imply that mothering is not as valuable to the economy as paid employment. Incentivising child care, even for young infants, implies that mothering can be outsourced. Even the increased availability of parent rooms at shopping centres (while valuable for the privacy they provide) reduces the visibility of breastfeeding.
All this can lead new mothers to feel as though breastfeeding and infant care is not important, not valuable, not significant. Then when you have a day where it feels like all you did was feed, change, and hold a baby, it’s easy to feel down, like you’re not doing anything worthwhile with your time.
That’s why knowing the dollar value of what you’re doing can be so empowering. The contribution you are making by breastfeeding and caring for your baby is tremendous. It has a large economic impact and literally saves lives.
Conclusion
I hate that we need to put a dollar value on breastfeeding. I wish that everyone could value it as a gift to society, and that we could care for breastfeeding mothers in a way that supports them to do this important work.
But seeing as we no longer function under a gift economy, putting a dollar value on it allows policy makers, employers, and society at large to understand, recognise, and value the important contribution that breastfeeding provides. It should lead to greater support for breastfeeding mothers through extended maternity leave and workplace adaptations to facilitate breastfeeding, reducing the pressure that many women feel to wean their infants so they can get back to paid employment. It should lead to greater consideration when policies are being planned to help achieve gender equality, to ensure that the policies don’t have an adverse effect on breastfeeding rates. It should support fathers to reduce or adjust their working hours so that they can take on a greater portion of unpaid care work. In short, it should help us remember that a mother’s role doesn’t end at childbirth, but that women have a unique contribution that can extend into toddlerhood, a contribution that should not be reduced in the name of gender equality.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! What supports do you wish were available for breastfeeding mothers?
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