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.

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.

I am sure these nurses have only the best intentions for the care and health of these babies but you have to stop and wonder if anyone back then thought a mother’s natural milk would be best for her premature baby. Do you think that occurred to any of them at any point?

Well, the short answer has to be “no” because the medical establishment taught nurses and doctors that cow’s milk was the optimal nutrition for a child that is born prematurely. How that logic came to be held so prominently is beyond me. Here are three nurses giving formula to babies born too soon in 1939.

If I’m not mistaken some hospitals these days recommend that mothers of preemies express milk for them as opposed to giving them formula. Correct me if I’m wrong on that.

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.

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.

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)

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