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The breasts have two main roles in human society: nutritive and sexual. Regularly, the men gave a genuine emotional need as their motive. In its issue of March 13, 2005, the London weekly The Sunday Times gave a report of a scientific survey (composed of 1690 British men) revealing that in 25 to 33% of all couples, the male partner had suckled his wife's breasts. In lesbian partnerships, mutual breastfeeding has been regarded as a familiar expression of affection and tenderness. Motivations īecause female breasts and nipples are generally regarded as an important part of sexual activity in most cultures, it is not uncommon that couples may proceed from oral stimulation of the nipples to actual breastfeeding. This can be a result of physical reasons (soreness) or psychological reasons (conflicted about her breasts being used other than for an infant). Some women lose the ability to be aroused while breastfeeding, and thus would not find lactation with a sexual partner to be erotic. Nipple stimulation of any sort is noted in reducing the incidence of breast cancer. Unintended milk flow ( galactorrhea) is often caused by nipple stimulation and it is possible to reach normal milk production exclusively by suckling on the breast. The association of pleasure and nutrition holds true as well for the lips, also erogenous zones, where pleasure may have led to " kiss feeding", in which mothers chew food before passing it on to the child. Paradoxically, there is even a school that believes that they are an evolutionary flaw, and can actually suffocate a nursing infant. Other hypotheses include that by chance breasts act as a cushion for infant heads, are a signal of fertility, or elevate the infant's head in breastfeeding to prevent suffocation. One hypothesis postulates that the breasts grew as a frontal counterpart to the buttocks as primates became upright to attracting mates, a model first developed in 1967. Humans are the only primates whose female members have permanently enlarged breasts after the onset of puberty the breasts of other primate species are enlarged only during pregnancy and nursing. Nipple and breast stimulation of women are a near-universal aspect of human sexuality, though nipples in males are not as sexualized.
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