This is a facinating look at the ways in which relationships and politics
have been shaped by mothers nursing other mothers' babies .
 http://aof.revues.org/document339.html The milk tie by Jeremy MacClancy
 >Abstract

Despite the plethora of studies about various aspects of breast-feeding, one
distinctive, historically significant and once very widespread facet of the
topic appears to have been neglected: the establishment of an indissoluble
'milk-tie' between infants of different parents who suck at the same breast,
and the important social, political and economic consequences which follow
from it. The aims of this paper are (1) to carry out the first (to my
knowledge) systematic survey of the literature on the milk-tie, and (2) to
try to derive some generalizations about the practice.
I attempt to demonstrate that the tie is a means of establishing a lasting
connection between two groups of people, which can fulfill a variety of
functions: to link otherwise isolated groups in structurally divided
societies; to increase the social distance of one group from another; to
control others' behaviour.
In this essay, I hope to show that knowledge of the milk-tie and its
diversities helps to illuminate the social uses to which food may be put,
and the ways that the unique nature of one food (human milk) may be put to
unique needs.<

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