November 27th, 2008
One of these days I am going to correctly upload these photos. My apologies for the look of these posts. The photographs are big and they never stay centered for some reason. I’m definitely working on it.
Take a look at these two photographs from November 1947. They show a baby in a Skinner box. The caption reads:
Boxes For Babies
Baby John Gray Jr. happily playing in his Skinner box, devel oped by Indiana Univ. psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner,. type of new-style crib which eliminates germs, drafts & constricting clothing because of temperature controls & slid-down glass.
Here is little John Gray Jr.
And here is John Jr. sound asleep in the box with his bottle. Where’s his mama? It is fascinating to see childrearing through the years. By the way, by 1947 breastfeeding was truly a practice of the past.
[ 6 comments ]
November 24th, 2008
I really wanted to share this photograph because it’s simply a beautiful scene from 1946. The only thing is these are French women, so their culture by this time probably (and in all honestly, I don’t know) was not dead-set against breastfeeding like here in America. It’s nice to see women embracing breastfeeding no matter where they live.
Caption: Mothers nursing their babies while waiting their turn to see the doctor, a nun standing nearby.
Location: Paris, France
Date: 1946
Photographer: David E. Sherman
Copyright: Time Life
[ 7 comments ]
November 23rd, 2008
This photograph is striking. It shows an African-American mother breastfeeding in 1937 in Greenville, MS. What once was normal in the black community has now shifted to abnormal. We all know breastfeeding rates among black women is the lowest in the country, but it wasn’t always this way. Something happened and I don’t think the shift to bottle-feeding can only be attributed to more mothers working outside of the home, although I’m sure working had a lot to do with it, just not everything. Attitudes changed and now breastfeeding isn’t the first form of infant-feeding with black mothers.
As a black mother I didn’t even consider bottle-feeding, but I’m rare given the numbers. I hope one day I can pinpoint what happened between the early 20th century and today that caused so many black mothers to balk at breastfeeding.
Location: Greenville, MS, US
Date taken: 1937
Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt
Time Life Magazine
[ 6 comments ]
November 22nd, 2008
One of these days I want to write a book about all these photos that I have been featuring on my blog. I believe there was a brief window in history where poor, rural mothers were afforded a level of breastfeeding freedom that their city-dwelling cousins didn’t have. Indeed, this was before the milk industry rushed in and changed infant feeding habits for mothers all across the country.
There are statistics about the growing number of women who bottle-fed their babies during this time, but what about the small percentage of women who continued to breastfeed? I want to tell their story. It would take a lot of work, to be sure, but I think it can be done
These are drought refugees from Oklahoma camping by the roadside. They hope to work in the cotton fields. The official at the border (California-Arizona) inspection service said that on this day, August 17, 1936, twenty-three car loads and truck loads of migrant families out of the drought counties of Oklahoma and Arkansas had passed through that station entering California up to 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
And here is the mother’s husband (I’m assuming). Even if he wasn’t her husband, this mother didn’t have to remove herself from the premises or cover herself just to nurse her son.
And this woman (below) didn’t feel compelled to nurse elsewhere even though she was being photographed nursing her daughter by a male photographer, Ben Shahn.
Breastfeeding, in my opinion and based on these photos, had not yet been defiled and was still a pristine practice.
It wouldn’t be long, though, before breastfeeding, as a natural practice, fell by the wayside especially as more mothers fed their babies cow’s milk in a bottle like this mother.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, Reproduction Numbers: LC-USF34-009747-E DLC, LC-USF3301-006023-M5 DLC, LC-USF34-T01-009666-E DLC
[ 2 comments ]
November 20th, 2008
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 ]
[ 2 comments ]
November 18th, 2008
This picture is actually quite difficult for me to look at beca
use 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]
[ 6 comments ]
November 16th, 2008
…even after mama has picked cotton for the day.
Cotton picker, Kaufman County, Texas 1936
[ 2 comments ]
© 2009 Mothering Magazine