This TED Talk features lactation researcher Katie Hind,

recorded live at TED Women, 2016.

Have you ever heard the one about how breastfeeding is free?

Yeah, it's pretty funny, because it's only free if we don't value women's time and energy.

Any mother can tell you how much time and energy it takes, to liquefy her body, to literally dissolve herself,

as she feeds this precious little cannibal.

Milk is why mammals suck.

At Arizona State University, in theparative Lactation Lab,

I decode mother's milk composition to understand its complexity

and how it influences infant development.

The most important thing that I've learned is that we do not do enough to support mothers and babies.

And when we fail mothers and babies, we fail everyone who loves mothers and babies.

The fathers, the partners, the grandparents, the aunties, the friends and kin that make our

human social networks.

It's time that we abandon simple solutions and simple slogans and grapple with the nuance.

I was very fortunate to run smack dab into that nuance very early during my first interview

with a journalist. When she asked me,

how long should a mother breastfeed her baby? And it was that word should that brought me up

short, because I will never tell a woman what she should do with her body.

Babies survive and thrive because their mother's milk is food, medicine, and signal.

For young infants, mother's milk is a complete diet that provides all the building blocks

for their bodies, that shapes their brain, and fuels all of

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