There is a photo I see all of the time when I do a  bare bones breastfeeding search. It shows a woman in a white cape breastfeeding her daughter, Ruth. Her name is Beatrice Baxter Ruyl. I’ve never thought one way or the other about this photograph because it has always been so easy to find, but today I decided to learn more about Beatrice. Perhaps she would come up in a Google search. And sure enough, she did.

Beatrice Baxter Ruyl was an illustrator for the Boston Herald in the early 1900s as well as an author. She was also a socialite who had many artistic friends like Gertrude Käsebier and Fred Holland Day.

This is a photograph taken by Gertrude Käsebier of Ruyl and her daughter in 1905. And if you look on the Museum of Modern Art web site you will find an even prettier breastfeeding photograph of Beatrice and Ruth Ruyl.

This photo is so interesting to me. Notice the mom breastfeeding at the table. Here’s the title of the photograph: 4:30 P.M. Mrs. Annie De Maritius, 46 Laight St., front, Nursing a dirty baby while she picks nuts. Was suffering with a sore throat. Rosie, 3 yrs. old hanging around. Conevieve, 6 yrs. old. Tessie, 6 yrs. old picks too. Make $1.50 to $2.00 a week. Husband on railroad works sometimes. Location: [New York, New York (State)]

There is so much going on in this photograph that I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about it thoroughly. This photograph was published in December 1911. It is amazing that the mother was able to work at home with her children, but the conditions don’t look very appealing or sanitary and clearly there are no child labor laws in place. At least the mother breastfed her children even when milk stations were readily available in New York where women could get milk for their babies.

I found a New York Times article from July 12, 1912 (pdf) that spoke about the milk stations and how effective they were at lowering infant mortality. In other words, the milk industry during that time pushed milk formula on mothers without realizing that milk was killing babies because it could not be properly sterilized. To remedy that instead of the city doing a massive breastfeeding outreach they decided to open up 88 New York City milk stations in the summer of 1912 to give mothers fresh milk. Judging from the photograph, every mother did not use the milk stations. Milk stations were one of the reasons mothers abandoned breastfeeding early in the twentieth century.

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 so little time to do the things I love, like write and research for this blog, for instance! With Penny’s help I plan to get back on track and blog here more often. And if all else fails you can always nudge me on Twitter or email me at jjames[at]themomsalon.com and tell me to post again!!

With all that said, Krista, a reader, sent me links to historic breastfeeding photographs that she found and I’d like to share them with you.

Both of the pictures are from the Life photo collection on Google. The first shows the common-law wife of farmer Pedro Pablo Caceres breast-feeding infant in 1964. Paraquay. The second photograph was also taken in 1964 and shows an Israeli mother breast feeding her baby.

Thank you, Krista, for taking the time to send me these photographs and for reading this blog. Thank you also for your patience. I was delighted by your email and am thrilled that you enjoy spending time reading what I dig up about historic breastfeeding. — Jennifer

Most of you have probably heard about the big Facebook virtual nurse-in that happened over the weekend. Tens of thousands of nursing moms are upset that Facebook bans nursing photos, but they have no qualms about showing pornographic ads to their users.

Well, this disdain for nursing — public or otherwise — is certainly not new. Check out this image from July 12, 1950. If you have been following my work for awhile now you have seen this photo before. I thought the imagery is especially potent now given that moms are still expected to hide behind partitions, so to speak, when they breastfeed.

The caption on the photo says: Hilda Kassell, E. 53rd St., New York City. Mother nursing baby.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division: Gottscho-Schleisner Collection (Library of Congress), [reproduction number, LC-G613-T-57610 ] Photographer: Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc., photographer.

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 decline in the 1930s. It all started in the hospitals with their insistence that mothers did now instinctively know how to care for their own babies. This caused many of the mothers to be separated from their babies for up to 24 hours sometimes and in that period their babies had already been introduced to baby formula. Check out this quote about how milk companies got into the hospitals to stake their dominance over infant feeding.

The expectant mother may first hear about PET milk when learning about formula preparations in the hospital’s orientation class. She and her husband may select the baby’s name from a list supplied by a company medical relations representative. The name card on her baby’s crib in the hospital nursery may bear the PET insignia. Most important her baby’s first bottle of formula may very well be made with PET brand evaporated milk. The “little things” add up to a convincing acceptance of the PET brand.

Above is the nursery at the Cairns General Hospital at the FSA (Farm Security Administration) farm workers’ community in February 1942. Eleven Mile Corner, Arizona.

And here are the babies the bottles are intended for.

Wolf Jacqueline. Don’t Kill Your Baby. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001.

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

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 ]

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 flip-flop.

Mothers and children in a city park on a hot day, New York City] between ca. 1908 and 1919. Bain News Service photograph.