• Last updated 3/15/13 by mamazee

So! As usual I have succumbed to yet another hiatus. I am trying to blog more regularly about historic breastfeeding, but life keeps getting in the way and before I know it a day has turned into a week and then a week has turned into a month. Yada. Yada. You've heard it before... To help me gain more energy and focus, I've enlisted the help of my good friend, Penny of BottlingHealth.com, to assist me with my food choices and meditation. There is so much that I want to accomplish in my life, but at the moment, everything is really stagnant and I find myself with... read more

• Last updated 3/15/13 by mamazee

I've been doing quite a bit of reading on historical breastfeeding of late just to give some context to the photographs I have been sharing with you. Thank goodness for Google Book Search or else I wouldn't be able to find as much great information as I have. This morning I was fixated with a book called Don't Kill Your Baby. Many of you probably know it very well. In fact, I have read it before, but it seems that every time I re-read I find a fact or a point that I've missed before. I thought this quote was quite telling about how breastfeeding rates began to... read more

• Last updated 3/31/13 by mamazee

Well, it certainly doesn't help breastfeeding matters any when women's breasts are seen as objects of gratification as opposed to means to feed one's baby. This photograph was taken of a carnival at Shelby County Fair and Horse Show Shelbyville, Kentuckym August 1940 Aug. Baby formula had made a huge insurgence in baby-feeding by 1940. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USF33-031018-M1 DLC ] read more

• Last updated 3/31/13 by mamazee

This picture is actually quite difficult for me to look at because it is extremely obvious how this mother just wants the best for her baby, but is solely relying on artificial means to make him well. This photograph was taken by Dorothea Lange and is entitled: Wife and sick child of tubercular itinerant, stranded in New Mexico. August 1936. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USF34-009747-E DLC] read more

• Last updated 3/31/13 by mamazee

...even after mama has picked cotton for the day. Cotton picker, Kaufman County, Texas 1936 read more

• Last updated 3/14/13 by mamazee

Again...breastfeeding in public: No big deal! Here is a mother hulling berries while she nurses her infant. Her other children sit beside her, also at work. Little Mabel Cuthrie [i.e., Guthrie?], 4 yrs. old started working last year. Location: [Seaford?, Delaware?] May 1910. read more

• Last updated 3/15/13 by mamazee

Coal miner's wife and child. Pursglove, West Virginia. 1938 Sept Here's the funny thing about these photos: During this time, it was the poor mothers who stayed fast to the natural art of breastfeeding, whereas metropolitan mothers and those who had better access to health care went to doctors who pushed formula and subsequently convinced them to feed their babies artificially. Now in 2008, poor, rural mothers statistically do not want to have anything to do with breastfeeding and mothers who are better off economically breastfeed in higher numbers -- what a... read more

• Last updated 3/15/13 by mamazee

One of the aspects of life in the 30s and 40s and before is that breastfeeding was so natural that countless moms breastfed in the midst of families, friends and, yes, even strangers. Look at this mom who breastfed even in full view of a photographer, a veritable stranger, who was hired by the government to take photographs of American life. This is a coal miner's wife and child while discussing conditions of house, lack of steady work for husband. Bertha Hill, West Virginia 1938 Sept. read more

• Last updated 3/15/13 by mamazee

Migrant mother and child in tent home. Harlingen, Texas 1939 Feb. read more

• Last updated 3/15/13 by mamazee

Before I even read the caption for this photograph below, I knew it had to have been taken in the 1940s. How is a mother supposed to bond with her baby by breastfeeding when it's in another room? Nurse Aiko Hamaguchi, mother Frances Yokoyama, baby Fukomoto, Manzanar Relocation Center, California, 1943 / Ansel Adams read more