Now when the lockdown has been extended for 19 more days, we have more time on our hands. “The breast used to be the man’s play-toy, and suddenly the baby is coming in and playing with daddy’s favorite play-toy.The country is effectively at a standstill since the lockdown was announced. “The breast has a day job and a night job,” Dr. Some experts say that adult breastfeeding might also have an element of jealousy to it, and that the breastmilk fetish might come from the fact that the breast’s sexual and nutritional functions are getting confused. That could be why they’re maybe looking for it on the internet.” “But we’re from a very conservative culture and women perhaps would not approach professionals to discuss about this. “This is completely new to me, I don’t see that as a common phenomenon in India” said Effath Yasmin, a Lactation Consultant who runs Nourish & Nurture Lactation Care & Parenting Education in Mumbai, India. “My concern about it is that if this is happening, then the baby might not be getting access to the mom’s own milk,” says Spatz.īut even if this is happening in India, as the search numbers suggest, Indian women are hardly nursing their husbands in the streets. “Men think, ‘oh there are all these health benefits of human milk, so if I’m a man, and I want to make myself healthier, then this is what I’m gonna do,'” she said, adding that the effects of breast milk on adults have not been extensively studied.Īnd obviously there’s a difference between an occasional sip and regular feeding. Diane Spatz, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing who also works at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s happening around the world, not just in India, but in China and Europe” said Dr. Perhaps husband breastfeeding is a global phenomenon that hasn’t caught on in the United States yet. “I had no urge whatsoever,” said Anthony, a 43-year-old New York wine salesman who asked that his last name not be used. “I never heard of a man who wanted to try it,” his wife Lisa said. George Silva, a 42-year old banker from Caracas, Venezuela told me he “never considered” tasting his wife’s milk while she was nursing their two children, now 8 and 5. “And if it’s bound to happen and there are no negative consequences, maybe it’s something that Mother Nature intended.”īut if asked, most American men say they’re definitely not into drinking milk directly from their wife’s breast. “If you put women who are nursing together with partners who are having sex, then it’s bound to happen,” said Felina Rakowski-Gallagher, founder and president of the Upper Breast Side lactation center in New York City. None of the lactation experts or OB-GYNs we spoke to said they had noticed a real adult breastfeeding trend in the United States, but they also weren’t particularly surprised to hear that it was a common search query. “And there have been times when the dads have been successful at clearing the blockage.” She added that the fathers’ teeth sometimes make this a bit complicated. “If the milk is backed up in the breast, and it’s very painful, and sometimes the baby can’t get it out and the pump can’t get it out,” she says. “Certainly men suck on nipples during sex, so they’re gonna get milk.”īut husband breastfeeding can be as much about utility as curiosity. “I think with a lot of men, there’s just a curiosity of what it tastes like, and what it would be like to nurse,” said Wendy Haldeman, who co-founded the Pump Station with Harvey. And one woman said she had been at a party where a man came up and asked if her husband like to “suckle on those breasts.” Corky Harvey, who co-founded the Pump Station and Nurtery in Santa Monica, CA, said that when she asked nursing mothers whether their husbands ever tried to breastfeed, two women said they had heard of friends getting this request from their husbands. Drinking human breast milk is enough of a niche fetish that there’s even a whole bar in Japan dedicated to it, where men can either buy shots of milk or get it straight from the nipple.