[quote MoonJelly]Can men breastfeed?
Yes.
health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/parts/why-men-have-nipples1.htm[/quote]
No.
Did you read the article and then - much more importantly - check the sources used to support this claim by the author?
There is no evidence whatsoever that male humans can feed a baby like female humans can. Not with the use of drugs, not naturally.
If there was, there would be no need for the author of this article to misrepresent anthropological research and resort to using unverified anecdotes about men supposedly breastfeeding.
If men could nourish babies with breast milk produced by their own bodies, we would all know a man who had done it. We would not have had countless babies starving after their mother died without a wet nurse and before formula was widely available. Or when their malnourished mothers couldn't produce any milk.
So, back to the article. It cites the following sources as evidence that men can breastfeed:
slate.com/technology/2011/05/male-lactation-can-a-33-year-old-guy-learn-to-breast-feed.html
(A man attempts to induce lactation by pumping for several hours a day and taking every supplement available. He gives up after more than seven weeks of zero success, but remains convinced it is possible for men to breastfeed because a man in Indonesia breastfed his infant daughter after his wife died in childbirth. Because male babies may secrete fluids from their nipples after birth. Because men who have cancer or other health conditions may secrete fluid from their nipples. Because he's seen videos of men squeezing tiny amounts of fluid from their nipples. Because men from a much studied hunter gatherer tribe breastfeed their babies.)
The article you cite as evidence that males can breastfeed bases its claims on the same evidence. (All of these articles do)
So let's factcheck:
- The Indonesian widower does not, of course, as reported at the time, breastfeed* both of his children. After his 18-month-old daughter refuses to take to the bottle he offers her after her mother dies in childbirth, she is inconsolable. He calms his toddler by letting her suckle on his nipple. His claims of actually feeding her in this way are unverified. The child already eats other food. Miraculously, the newborn has no problem accepting formula milk. If this very poor man had been able to actually feed his newborn, he would surely have preferred that to buying formula.
*Breastfeeding means actually feeding a child with milk produced by your own body. As many women struggling with nursing know much to their distress, producing a tiny amount of milk does not equate to feeding a baby.
- The Aka. That famous pygmy tribe in Africa. Apparently Barry Hewlett, a famous anthropologist, has observed the men in this tribe breastfeeding their babies (that is actually feeding). A claim publicised by a fathers' rights group some years ago.
Here is Professor Barry Hewlett's official staff page on the Washington State University website:
anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu/people/hewlett/
On the bottom it lists his publications spanning several decades of research. I would highly recommend reading them, but I'm interested in anthropology. I had read up on the Aka before, so I already knew the claim misrepresented the professor's reported observations. I read about a dozen of his papers or so for this factcheck. Highly readable, particularly intriguing are his comparisons of infant care in different hunter gatherer tribes.
What he found was that Aka men will allow their nursing child to suckle on their nipple for comfort if his wife is unavailable to nurse. Instead of the dummy often used for this purpose hereabouts.
In one of the much more recently published papers, the authors specifically define breastfeeding as maternal nursing (and nursing done by other women in lieu of a baby's mother). I can only guess as to why they felt this was necessary. But these misrepresentations of his findings may have something to do with it.
And that's it. That's the sum total of evidence. Not for want of trying I hasten to add. Countless men have tried. There's after all quite a few videos with men squeezing their nipples hard to produce a drop of fluid. But in males that is typically due to abnormal hormone levels, usually caused by health conditions or, in the case of male newborns who produce so-called witches milk, the remnants of maternal hormones.
There is still no evidence that even one man has ever managed to actually feed a baby by breastfeeding.
So please, don't post unscientific nonsense to support the upsetting changes to the OP's previously female-only breastfeeding support group.
I'm sorry user643899 to hear about your group being disrupted in this way. Unfortunately this isn't the first and won't be the last support group of this kind affected in this way. The only non-dramatic solution I know is setting up a vetted and (initially at least) private alternate group for those members who continue to prefer a female-only support setting.