Just before you think that this is such a good April Fool’s joke that I’m getting in a month early, I need to assure you that what is about to follow is completely serious. In fact, even though the said product is not yet on the market, it has already won an award for challenging “the fundamental meanings of male and female, father and mother, parent and child”.

What is it? Well, it’s nothing less than a breastfeeding kit for men! According to The Blaze, Marie-Claire Springham:

Is being praised for her kit that would make men be able to “chestfeed” children in order to overcome the gender inequality of women-only breastfeeding.

The author of the article, Carlos Garcia, asks the tongue-in-cheek question in the subtitle to his piece, ‘Will critics be labelled as lactose intolerant?’ Here is the video of Springham explaining how her product will work on Good Morning Britain:

Now, according to The Blaze, Springham explained the rationale for her invention as follows:

“So, basically the way I designed it is new couples when they find out they’re expecting sign up to basically a pre-natal course,” she explained.

“And they receive a kit in which it contains nine months of a drug called progestin,” she added, “which we know as the non-estrogen based birth control pill.”

That drug is meant to “stimulate the production of milk-producing glands” in the males who take it. Another drug regimen would then result in lactation.

Maressa Brown, from Parents.com, further explained that, “The kit also comes with some technical parts to make it easier for a dad to nurse: a pump and compression vest, which serves as “the male equivalent of the maternity bra”.

The same article goes on to state:

Springham sees the kit as “an empathy tool that enables dads to take a more active role in the first six months of the baby’s life and allows moms to relinquish some of the pressures and duties of parenting.”

She hopes the concept will fuel “further discussion of mental health and empowers new parents to support each other even more at such an incredible time in their lives.”

Is it just me, or has the world gone mad? Every time I think that we might have reached ‘peak-parody’ as a culture something like this comes up.

A few short years ago a scenario like this would have been considered comedy, but it seems that now people are more than happy to make a boob of themselves.

Mark Powell is the Associate Pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, Strathfield.

Illustration: Amazon Australia.

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