4 Field Colloquium Series: "Mother's Milk in Evolutionary and Cultural Context"

Our 4 Field Colloquium series presents speakers from the four fields of anthropology on new and topical interests in the field.

"Public health efforts promote the first 1000 days of life as influential for health and well-being across the lifespan. This developmental period has both vulnerability and opportunity for the integration of infant physical, behavioral, and microbial systems. Previous research effort has prioritized investigating physiological investment before birth and behavioral care during infancy, but milk production extends physiological investment for the neonate among mammals. Breast milk nourishes, protects, and informs the developing neonate through nutrients, defenses, and hormones. Unlike adults in Westernized, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic nations, far removed from the ancestral conditions that shaped our bodies, the breastfed infant develops within an “adaptively relevant environment.” Cross-cultural investigations combined with an evolutionary viewpoint yield new perspectives of mothers, milk, and infants. Biological and social scientific research on this topic can directly translate to more personalized clinical recommendations and health optimization for mothers and their infants as well as substantiate the importance of infrastructure and institutional support for breastfeeding. Further, a better understanding of the composition and function of milk informs the composition of a more representative artificial substitutes for those mothers facing obstacles or contraindications to breastfeeding. Lastly, decoding mother’s milk will allow for enhanced precision medicine for the most fragile infants and children in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units. Transdisciplinary approaches to mother’s milk research, along with public engagement, facilitate discoveries at the bench and their translation to applications at the bedside."