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 ]
September 24th, 2008
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.
[ 10 comments ]
September 19th, 2008
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.
[ 2 comments ]
September 18th, 2008
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.
[ 5 comments ]
September 15th, 2008
This is a photo I found in early spring and posted to my personal blog. It’s such a great photo that I had to post it here as well.
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)
[ 2 comments ]
© 2009 Mothering Magazine