The Making of Human Milk: Law and History of Milk Banks in France (2026)

At the crossroads of history, law, and gender studies, this book engages with contemporary debates on reproductive health, care, and the role of the maternal body in public policy. It examines a still largely understudied object in the social sciences in France: human milk as it circulates outside the body.

What becomes of this fluid once it is expressed, stored, and distributed through technical and institutional arrangements? How has a substance so often regarded as intimate progressively been claimed by medicine and law? From its collection from wet nurses to the establishment of milk banks, the book traces this transformation from the 1880s to the present day. It shows how the production of human milk shifted from paid labor to a practice now presented as exclusively altruistic, regulated by health law and bioethics.

 Drawing on a wide range of sources—archives, legal texts, interviews, and observations—this book brings to light long-overlooked issues surrounding reproductive work, motherhood, and breastfeeding understood as a form of collective care. It is intended for historians, legal scholars, and sociologists, as well as for anyone interested in the relationships between gender, health, and institutions.