What did women do with their babies back in the early 20th century and before?

Question

Formula didn't really become popular until the 50s and 60s, right? So, say it's the 1870s and a woman is in town with her baby. Her baby gets hungry and starts screaming. Did she, probably a conservative Christian, start nursing right there? Or did she finish buying whatever she was buying at the general store, letting the baby scream all the while and annoy everyone else, make the journey home, and then feed?

Although I am agnostic and a liberal, I do not mean to insult conservative Christians. I realize that many of them are supporters of public breastfeeding, too.

Answer 1

1820-1870

Breastfeeding was a baby's birthright, according to William Cobbett. It was better to bring up by hand than to resort to the "hireling breast". Even if the experience was painful, it was worth enduring, impressing as it did both father and other children with what a mother did for them. "Of all the sights that this world affords, the most delightful is a mother with her clean and fat baby lugging at her breast, leaving off now and then and smiling, and she half-smothering it with kisses."

Unfortunately, the very enthusiasm for breastfeeding contributed to its undoing. In well-meaning attempts to inform and advise mothers, some manuals laid down methods doomed to failure. "From the first moment the infant is applied [note that distancing word] to the breast, it must be nursed upon a certain plan," insisted Dr Bull. "The baby must take a little thin gruel, or a mixture of one-third water and two-thirds cow's milk, sweetened with loaf sugar until the breast milk is fully established." After a mere week of demand feeding, "it is essentially necessary to nurse the infant at regular intervals of three or four hours, day and night". In fact the timing of breastfed babies' feeds ought not to be a problem. Hungry babies feed, bigger ones probably more often than small ones. The problem only arises when writers of babycare manuals, having told the mother how often to bath the baby and when to take it for walks, decide to tell her how often to feed it.

Better advice existed. Henry Chavasse advised mothers to breastfeed as soon as possible after the baby was born. John Darwall, author of Plain Instructions for the Management of Infants (1830), said that artificially fed babies needed feeding less frequently because they took longer to digest the food that they were given. This perceptive distinction was not made by anyone else.

By the 1850s, the improvement in patent baby-foods was felt to be so great that the manuals recommended them with enthusiasm. Chavasse's ninth edition listed 17 substitutes for mother's milk, some of them still household names today: Liebig's Food, Revalenta Arabica, Horlicks, Mellin's, Robinson's Patent Groats. The scientific halo that doctors raised over these concoctions, combined with exaggeration of the difficulties of breastfeeding, contributed to a swing after the middle of the century from the uncertainties of suckling to the security of the bottle.

1870-1920

If any one book were to be chosen to convey the mood of these years, it would be Marion Harland's Common Sense in the Nursery. It conveys the liberated mother of the 1880s briskly and wittily. She had no time for mothers who wanted to spend all their time with their babies. "The best mothers are not those in whom the maternal instinct is cultivated to an abnormal excrescence."

The most striking aspect of the downgrading of maternal instinct was the pronounced swing against breastfeeding, now represented as out of date.

The most outspoken of the anti-breastfeeding school was a redoubtable lady called Mrs Panton. Her model young couple, Edwin and Angelina, were led From Kitchen to Garret when they set up home, and told The Way They Should Go once their children arrived. Breastfeeding, still being lukewarmly recommended by doctors as "natural", may have been so in a state of nature, she conceded "but we don't live in that time now, and we must adapt [a consciously evolutionary term] our doings to the age in which we were born ... Let no mother condemn herself to be a common or ordinary 'cow' unless she has a real desire to nurse ... "

Meanwhile, Dr Eric Pritchard advised women to make themselves as much like cows as possible, if they wanted to breastfeed successfully. They were to drop all social commitments, rest a lot and follow a bland and nourishing diet.

Dr Allbutt, despite being the author of the racy but banned The Wife's Handbook, told women in Every Mother's Handbook that "sexual emotion of frequent occurrence deteriorates the quality of the milk".

By 1914, Mary Gardner likened mothers to the Egyptian hens who had forgotten how to sit on their own eggs because they were kept warm for them by their keepers. "In the same way, as a race we are becoming decadent with regard to breast-feeding, and the mothers who can't and the mothers who won't are causing successive generations to be less and less fit physically to nourish their infants naturally."

Despite Darwin's conclusion that evolution was a process that had taken thousands and millions of years to happen, it is clear that in the popular mind, the action of every generation risked influencing the whole race.

-- http://www.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2212258,00.html







We've come a looooooong way in the advancement and understanding of breastfeeding and breastmilk.

Answer 2

Most married women were at home and did not have jobs. Of course there were exceptions. Farm wives often were out in the fields all day like their husbands, some were, some were not. If a man owned a store, his wife might work along with him (probably not paid a salary) so he did not have to hire workers. There were many women during the industrial revolution who worked in factories, even married women, especially some immigrants. There were also starting to be nurses, most single, but some worked after marriage. Also school teachers and librarians. But they were usually single, because many school districts would not only not allow married teachers, but a single teacher seen in the company of a man, not her father or brother might be fired for 'impropriety". Women had few appliances, although some things like ice boxes (forerunners of electric refrigerators, with large blocks of ice to keep food cold) were around by the early 1900's, I think. People often had large families and the oldest or older girls were expected to be at home helping take care of younger kids and doing housework. Boys might be sent out at 10 or earlier to find odd jobs if the family was poor. Girls were very protected and before WWI there was little dating, most girls were 'courted' by young men, mostly sitting in her parlor with the parents close by.

Answer 3

There was no such thing as "nursing in public" before 1950--there was just *nursing* and women did it anywhere.

So, yes, she would feed the baby right there, in the store, at the church, on a bench, wherever she was.

If you'd like to see some pictures from the library of congress as proof, here are a few:

Breastfeeding in public, Sept. 1943:
http://www.mommytoo.com/2007/06/breastfeeding-in-public-september-1943.html

1937:
http://www.mommytoo.com/2007/11/changes-changes.html

Cotton Picker 1936:
http://www.mommytoo.com/2007/09/part-ii-breastfeeding-and-men.html

Several shots 1935-1938:
http://www.mommytoo.com/2007/08/nursing-in-publicyou-be-judge.html

1936- Dust bowl, nursing on the side of the road, yes, in front of men and other children:
http://www.mommytoo.com/2007/09/part-1-breastfeeding-and-men-highway-of.html

The thing you will notice is that they are NOT covering up with a blanket or a shawl, the men do not seem to notice at all, in fact, it's one of the least remarkable things about the setting.

I can't wait until we get back to that point.

Answer 4

Well first of all I doubt women made daily trips to the store in the 1870's so this is probably a situation that arose very rarely. I know I try very hard to schedule my errands around my childrens schedule(I think all mom's do) so that it goes smoothly. If the baby started to fuss I am sure she would of fed it discretly just like now.

Answer 5

I don't see how any mom can just let her baby scream while she finishes shopping. I for one get annoyed easily and if my son starts screaming, I make sure to remove him from where I am quickly and nurse him right there.

Answer 6

Kind of a random question! I assume she nursed right away, since that is what a baby needs. If she was smart, she wouldn't give that baby anything but breastmilk!!
I am a conservative Christian who nurses publicly! :)

Answer 7

Just started nursing right there. Back then, that was the only way to feed children, and breasts weren't really viewed as sexual thing, they were there to feed children.

Answer 8

I can contribute this much. Women during the 1840's through the civil war wouldn't be caught DEAD breastfeeding let alone pregnant. On top of that most women would not bring their babies with them into town, if they left the house at all, preferring to leave children with wet nurses or relatives. Goats milk and cows milk was used if wet nurses weren't available...

Answer 9

why do you think pacifiers were invented? They also used boiled water to quieten their babies. But generally they tried to get their errands done before their babies became unsettled.

Answer 10

People were far more discrete in those days. And usually stayed home for longer periods of time while raising infants. But for the most part, the mother would bring along a couple of bottles of cows milk for baby.