For many women, the pressure to breastfeed becomes the first deep denial of their bodies’ needs and desires in motherhood. Clinical and colloquial conversations around breastfeeding rarely emphasize consent or autonomy, or consider a parent’s prior relationship with their body, assailing them instead with injunctions to just relax. Not to mention the absence of attention given to just how much time and effort breastfeeding takes. “Heaven forbid,” Kate Manne writes, “that whatever putative benefits breastfeeding has for the infant should be soberly weighed against the pain, exhaustion, and lack
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