Breastfeeding In Rewind

Blogging for Mothering magazine is truly a dream come true for me! I never thought in a million years that I would be able to write on a daily basis for a magazine that I adore about a subject I hold dear: breastfeeding.

The angle I will take on breastfeeding here is going to be a bit unconventional. I won’t be blogging about current news and events surrounding breastfeeding. Instead I will blog about historic breastfeeding and show evidence that over the years the formula industry aided in making nursing in public taboo.

Some of you may know me from my personal breastfeeding blog, and others of you may be reading my writing for the very first time. A lot of what I have previously written I will also share here. I will publish a whole host of new photos and archived information about breastfeeding that has largely been lost to history.

On my about page it mentions a photograph I found on the Library of Congress website that prompted me on this never-ending search for more historic breastfeeding photos. Well, here it is. Here is the photo that started it all. I hope you join me as I find more and more photos and writings that show how much nursing in public was a part of everyday life for so many mothers for so long.

I’d like to introduce you to a mother who is traveling from Louisville, Kentucky to Memphis, Tennessee on a Greyhound bus. Here, she is waiting in the Chattanooga bus terminal and breastfeeding in public in September 1943.