"Rob Weisskirch" wrote, " student claimed that she heard that women who hang around nursing mothers and infants often will sometimes start spontaneously lactating, even though they are not pregnant. I know that infant cries can cause nursing mothers to leak but have never heard of lactation by proximity." Jay Rosenblatt & his students published a great deal on "concaveation" in rats. By exposing virgin female (and male) rats to newborn pups over a period off days, they will come to exhibit maternal behavior. This includes hovering over the pups in a nursing posture. But to my knowledge, lactation is absent. (BTW, the females come to exhibit the maternal behavior sooner than the males but both will exhibit it.) So I believe it to be highly unlikely that proximity to neonates or even lactating mothers & neonates would induce lactation in another woman. That being said, there are medical conditions that can cause lactation even in an adult man. And if a woman has recently been lactating I suppose it's possible that exposure to other nursing mothers might elicit some lactation (or, more likely, "letdown"). But if this ever happens it must be quite rare. In many species of primate, non-parous females spend a great deal of time in the proximity of nursing mothers and I know of no examples where other females in the troop start lactating due to that proximity. Ed
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Department of Psychology West Chester University of Pennsylvania http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/home.htm <http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/home.htm> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, bluegrass fiddler and herpetoculturist...... in approximate order of importance. ---
