From wet nurses to baby formula, Chine McDonald and Madeleine Pennington explore the confused history of feeding. 27/03/2025

Episode 3 – Feeding: Could mothers be replaced by feeding machines? 

Breast is best, or best is fed? In this episode, we tackle one of the most controversial aspects of mothering: feeding. Everyone seems to have an opinion about it. But, as Maddy and Chine find out in this episode, debate about whether and how mothers feed their children has been going on for centuries – including Victorian prudishness about the Virgin Mary breastfeeding Jesus. No matter how we feed our children, will there always be ways to shame women? Why is feeding often talked about in machine–like ways such as milk ‘production’ and ‘lactation’, and how is technological advancement such as developments in ‘biomilk’ going to transform feeding? We talk to a range of experts to explore how mothers bear witness to something that society as a whole has forgotten – that we are part of nature, that our bodies require care and nourishment, that we are vulnerable and dependent, and also that the ways in which feeding opens a door intro transcendence. We explore theological ideas of feeding and what it tells us about Christian concepts of God, including 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich’s writing about ‘divine milk’.  

Featured in this episode: Joanna Wolfarth, cultural historian and author of Milk: An Intimate History of Breastfeeding; theologian Rachel Muers, chair of divinity at the University of Edinburgh; the Very Rev Dominic Barrington, dean of York Minster; Rev Ayla Lepine, associate record at St James’s Piccadilly and former Ahmanson fellow in art and religion at the National Gallery; Dominic Barrington; medical ethicist and author Claire Gilbert, author of I, Julian. 

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