SPECIAL SECTION Big babies: Neoliberalism, adult male breastfeeding and the marketised maternal Heidi J. Nast International Studies, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA Correspondence Heidi J. Nast Email: hnast@depaul.edu This paper takes a preliminary look at a commoditised form of caregiving that emerged in the first decade of the new millennium in the USA, China and Japan: adult male breastfeeding (AMBF). I argue that AMBF is emblematic of both the changing geography of industrial production since the 1973 oil crisis and how consumption has since come to be the most important economic task of those within privileged nations and enclaves. AMBF emphasises how marketing forces today have deployed what are increasingly maternalistic imaginaries to emphasise the degree to which a product or service dyadically recognises, affirms and cares for its consuming subjects. The marketised maternal is rooted in the racialised reproductive savings of those long given privileged access to the superior produc- tivity of the Machine, which compelled smaller family size. It is these savings that have allowed for new dyadic intimacies to be fashioned between the mater- nalised “market-and-me”. The flipside of this is that privileged consumers are increasingly infantilised, even as its dependencies are supported by a workforce largely procreated by racially diminished other-mothers (ROMs). Infantilism, in turn, psychically shields consumers from the planetary devastations that have made privileged consumption possible. AMBF holds theoretical promise by mak- ing the unconscious nature of desire-for the maternal (as a dyadic site of caregiv- ing) explicit along with the latter’s revolutionary potential. KEYWORDS adult male breastfeeding, China, consumer infantilisation, Japan, marketised maternal, maternal alienation, reproductive savings, USA 1 | INTRODUCTION This paper takes a preliminary look at a commoditised form of dyadic (maternal) caregiving that emerged in the first dec- ade of the new millennium: adult male breastfeeding (AMBF). I argue that the desire-for the lactating breast evinced in AMBF speaks theoretically to how unconscious desires for, and anxieties about, the maternal have increasingly been routed across and through privileged domains of commodity consumption. In other words, the infantilism of AMBF is in keeping with the infantilisation of consumption practices across privileged nation-states and enclaves, upon which global production largely depends. While consumption’s growing importance is obvious in the massive capitalisation of marketing, its uncon- scious ties to infantilisation are found in the maternal imaginaries of dyadic recognition, comfort and care being increas- ingly relied on to sell services and goods (e.g., Bernardini, 2013; Cundari, 2015; Gordon, 1999; Groll & McKinley, 2015; Walls, 2003). To the degree that AMBF dramatises the commodity force by which maternal functions are being hived off ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2018 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Accepted: 26 March 2018 DOI: 10.1111/area.12470 Area. 2018;1–10. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/area | 1