U.S. legislators have recently considered cutting funding for breastfeeding peer counseling. One reason why they might decide to make these cuts is that breastfeeding and human milk are invisible to them. It is easy to get rid of something that isn’t seen or valued. If there were a
way to make this valuable resource—human milk—visible, and this information was given to our legislators, perhaps the door could be opened to including breastfeeding support in budget planning. Here is a step-by-step process to generate the value of human milk in your state or
community, so that women’s contributions can be part of economic analysis.