Swedish father Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, has entered into an experiment that he hopes will help him breastfeed his future children.
On Tuesday, the Stockholm family man began stimulating his breasts with a pump in a bid to produce milk.
"Anything that doesn't do any harm is worth trying out. And if it works it could prove very important for men's ability to get much closer to their children at an early stage," Bengtsson told The Local.
His efforts are to be documented by Swedish TV8, with the first instalment scheduled to air at 9pm on Wednesday on the Aschberg show ...
"If it works and the milk turns out to have a high nutritional value it could be a real breakthrough," he said.
I don't believe that the average Swedish man is going to follow suit. But nor is this little experiment in sex equality to be dismissed as a mere freak. It's a radical application of what is official policy in Sweden - with most of the Western world not that far behind.
The question to be asked is this: why would a Swedish man want to get close to a child the female way?
The answer, in brief, is as follows. The Swedes believe that autonomy is what matters. They believe that we must be free to self-determine who we are. We don't get to self-determine our sex, so therefore sex roles are thought to be negative limitations on the individual. There cannot be distinct roles for mothers and fathers in the family, there can only be one unisex role.
This one unisex role is the hands on, child-caring maternal one. Why? There are a few reasons. First, if there are no distinct maternal or paternal roles, then what is left is the day-to-day care of the child. It is this aspect of the traditional motherly role that is left over for both men and women to participate in.
Second, if autonomy is what matters, then people will be concerned that it is distributed equally. In Sweden, the male career role is considered the pinnacle of autonomy. Therefore, the Swedes want women to participate in careers to an equal degree. But this is only possible if men take on half of the traditional female mothercare role within the home. Sex equality can only work if men become mothers.
Third, we show our "liberation" from traditional sex roles to the highest degree by reversing them. If women are liberated by becoming the breadwinner, then men are liberated by doing mothercare work in the home. In the liberal mind, there is an heroic breaking of boundaries when there is such a crossover. For a man to breastfeed a baby would mean a loss of restraints on our autonomous choice - there would be a freedom for a man to be female.
Finally, the feminist pioneers of this way of thinking were hostile to the traditional paternal role because they associated it with an oppressive, unchosen authority. Therefore, the new unisex model of parenthood had to be based on the maternal role. For instance, back in 1982 Sara Ruddick declared that she looked forward to the day when:
men are willing and able to share equally and actively in transformed maternal practices ... On that day there will be no more 'fathers,' no more people of either sex who have power over their children's lives and moral authority in their children's world ... There will [instead] be mothers of both sexes.
So what do other Swedes think of Ragnar Bengtsson's efforts to achieve the "real breakthrough" of male lactation? Thankfully, some have condemned it outright as sick. But take note of the views of the Swedish expert asked to comment on the case, Sigbritt Werner, a professor of endocrinology.
She is a woman of science rather than of women's studies. But she has exactly the same mindset as Ragnar. She too believes that the aim is for Swedish men to get closer to their children by simulating breastfeeding:
But Werner stressed that while she was interested in the subject, she was more keen for men to use their breasts to comfort their children.
"Men often have trouble finding things. And if the mother is out, the child is screaming and they can't find the pacifier I'm sure there are a lot of men who give their baby their breasts. [Note: she has reached the point of assuming that the liberal world view is true and that men routinely offer their breasts to babies just like women do.]
"Healthy children know instinctively that the breast has a dual function. One gives them milk, the other gives them warmth and a cosy bond. Men don't need to strive to produce milk but they should take the opportunity to get closer to their child by offering them their breasts in the same way as women," she said.
If you believe that there is no distinct paternal role, then other things logically follow. If there is no paternal role, then how do men come to feel connected to their children? Logically, by doing what women do to feel connected - by feminine acts of care like offering the breast to a child.
So it all ends with the idea that the Swedish father should be a copy of a woman.
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