I have another photograph for you today; one that shows — yet again — that breastfeeding, especially for those who lived a rural lifestyle and had yet to be convinced of formula, was a part of everyday life.

Although this photo isn’t dated, I wager a bet it was taken during the mid to late 1930s. It may potentially be the early 1940s. What is particularly telling about this photograph are the notes on the back of the photo (below) and the fact that once again breastfeeding in public was no big deal before the formula industry changed the perception of infant feeding (almost irreparably) in this country. The men could care less that a woman’s exposed breast is in full view of everyone, although the little boy on the right does seem a little enthralled by the baby breastfeeding.

Written Notes on Item
a) Part of Social Hour audience at Shafter Camp (handwritten on reverse); b) Todd’s favorite picture of an “Okie Family” in Shafter F.S.A. Camp. Nursing babies was the usual thing at camp “Socials.” (typed and attached to reverse)

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.

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:

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.

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

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.

Although this photo isn’t dated, I wager a bet it was taken during the mid to late 1930s. It may potentially be the early 1940s. What is particularly telling about this photograph are the notes on the back of the photo (below) and the fact that once again breastfeeding in public was no big deal before the formula industry changed the perception of infant feeding (almost irreparably) in this country. The men could care less that a woman’s exposed breast is in full view of everyone, although the little boy on the right does seem a little enthralled by the baby breastfeeding.

Written Notes on Item
a) Part of Social Hour audience at Shafter Camp (handwritten on reverse); b) Todd’s favorite picture of an “Okie Family” in Shafter F.S.A. Camp. Nursing babies was the usual thing at camp “Socials.” (typed and attached to reverse)

Nurse Aiko Hamaguchi, mother Frances Yokoyama, baby Fukomoto, Manzanar Relocation Center, California, 1943 / Ansel Adams

I guess there wasn’t much breastfeeding going on in this hospital!

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USE6-D-006952 DLC]

It’s no wonder breastfeeding had to literally make a comeback among American mothers in the 1960s and 70s. If this picture is indicative of the baby prep classes taught throughout the country in the 1940s, it is truly remarkable that breastfeeding ever made a resurgence in this country.

Here is a photograph from October 1943 of a Washington, DC home economics class at Woodrow Wilson High School. Notice the baby bottles!

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number,LC-USW3-039779-D DLC ] Photographer: Ester Bubley