Abstract
This chapter provides a reading of Where’s the Mother? (2016), a memoir by Trevor MacDonald , a transgender man who gave birth following chest surgery and committed to exclusively breastfeeding his son until he was ready to accept solid food. Producing some milk of his own, and providing expressed donor milk through an at-the-breast supplemental nursing system, MacDonald succeeded in his objective. In the process, he and his partner became part of a bridging network of donors and supporters, building relationships with people they might never have otherwise met. The chapter provides a detailed case study of how a sharing economy of breastmilk donation builds relational frameworks of embodied care and argues for a hybrid system enabling informal, unremunerated milk sharing alongside payment through formal banking networks.
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Giles, F. (2017). Towards Social Maternity: Where’s the Mother? Stories from a Transgender Dad as a Case Study of Human Milk Sharing. In: Shaw, R. (eds) Bioethics Beyond Altruism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55532-4_12
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