My wife read some study that during the first year of her baby’s life, a woman will spend umpteen zillion hours breast-feeding (I forget the figure you can see why I’m not good at arguing these points). It’s just a lot slower than bottle-feeding. My main concern about breastfeeding was the time expenditure. Like, breast-feeding is a paleo diet but for babies (which is something I believe one of the people at the class actually said, which, now that I think about it, is both clever and annoying). What surprised me about the class, however, was that so many of the men and women (six of the ten women were there with their partners, who were all men) were interested in breast-feeding because of the intangible benefits-the connection to the baby and the feeling that it was just more natural and was what you’re kind of supposed to do as a human being.

And this was even more annoying because it was offered by the university system where my wife works and where we receive our medical care, so it carried the imprimatur of considerable medical authority. Less a class about breast-feeding and more of a commercial for breast-feeding. Note, she hasn’t studied breast-feeding or anything-she has to google it the same as me-but she has a certain level of moral authority when it comes to scientific data. Unfortunately it’s hard for me to argue these points, because my wife has an MD and a PhD and is a professor of immunology and infectious disease. If you look deep into the data, you’ll find that the benefits aren’t necessarily there. Personally, I am a breast-feeding skeptic. “Matriphagy” was inspired by a breast-feeding class my wife and I took during the last few months of her pregnancy.

Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia