Modern-day wetnursing?

[PeoniesPlease]

Article here at the Guardian.

I don't know what I think about this. On one hand, I can see that it is an economic opportunity for some women.

But I do feel uncomfortable with it - I suppose I just don't like the idea that it is ok to pay for the use of a woman's body. We don't live in an equal society, and these transactions wouldn't be carried out in a vacuum where issues of privilege and class weren't relevant.

I also think that like surrogacy for profit, it will be poor women who choose to do this, and then you could question whether it is a real and free choice or not.

I'm really undecided about how I feel about it so would be keen to hear other perspectives.

I just loved this comment:

"You know what? I really, really want to know what Godfrey Bloom thinks about this, given that it involves foreigners, gays and women... "

Personally I'm conflicted too for the reasons you mentioned but I am surprised this is something that's 'coming back'; I assumed it hadn't gone away.

Yes, that made me too!

I know plenty of people who take jobs they are not particularly keen on to earn money the choice is always there. Yes it is harder if you have less but no one makes a choice of employment in a vacuum purely based on if they want to do it.

It comes down to the fact it is part of the body that is being employed rather than a whole person but most jobs see the person as a tool or implement rather than an individual.

Hmm

I can see the trickiness re bodies etc.

For me personally, BF my own felt like "work" so I could easily imagine BF as work that I could do. I suppose that I would see it as no more "personal" than caring for someone else's baby as I did my own in terms of nappies, bathing and so on. You wipe their bums and you get pee on you and you feed them. Just sort of all part of the same thing to me I guess.

I imagine that it might be a job of choice for organic middle class types as not main family income, not just poor women as per OP? Not sure.

I felt that in the article her phrasing about feeding someone else's baby like "taking a new lover" unhelpful and reinforcing the idea that breasts are all about sex. Obviously feeding a different baby is going to feel different, but that has nothing to do with sex. And equating it with sex is what all the problems to do with BF are about in the first place.