Raphael traces the decline of breastfeeding to the industrial revolution. "The physical change to artificial feeding actually requires only a single generation." Social acceptance is much slower (47 48). In 1880, 95% of all infants were breastfeed for two to four years. By 1990 only 50% were breastfeed at birth. Three quarters of those infants were weaned by six months (Stuart-Macadam and Dettwyler ix). The rapid decline of breastfeeding occurred in this century, reaching its nadir in 1971. Chances are that your mother did not breastfeed you. She may not have been given the choice. Many books have been written to help women rediscover breastfeeding. What caused this loss to occur?


Decline and Fall of Breastfeeding

Degeneration of breastfeeding into bottle feeding began as scientific fields and sociological changes converged. Edward Newton's forward in Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, cites five major cultural phenomena that led to the decline of breastfeeding:
1) The loss of community/family knowledge, role models and support of breastfeeding,
2) The tendency to hand over responsibility for personal health to the medical profession,
3) an increasingly more patronizing attitude toward patients by the medical professions,
4) a greater reliance on institutions, along with their structured environments, and
 5) premature application of poorly conceived and poorly tested medical theory (x).


To understand why women choose to breastfeed or why they bottle feed, it is important to look at how a society views babies. "Our attitudes toward breastfeeding are indicators of our attitudes toward children (Baumslag and Michels 37)." "At the beginning of the 20th century, psychologists and physicians were convinced that babies developed best if they were raised according to hard and fast rules (Eiger and Olds 16)." Sheila Kitzinger calls this the beginning of the era of "The Monster
 Baby" (Stuart-Macadam and Dettwyler 391). The medical and psychological communities began advising mothers that they must gain control over the infant and show him that she is the master. "The medical profession sought to regulate the breastfeeding process for women, imposing arbitrary rules with little physiological basis (Stuart-Macadam and Dettwyler 217)." In 1930, Nelson's Textbook of Pediatrics warned against rigid scheduling "The disadvantage of a rigid schedule for feeding is that the time of the feeding or the intervals between may not correspond with the infant's natural 'hunger rhythm.' This results in prolonged crying; and the infant develops various types of feeding difficulties (Stuart-Macadam and Dettwyler 218)."



In 1896, a book called The Care and Feeding of Infants began the scientific raising of children. The author, L. Emmet Holt, recommended feeding children by the clock. He felt that too much handling, cuddling etc., . . . weakened the child. His book was available until 1935. (Edwards and Waldorf 76) The rules for raising children treated them as if they were little adults. Historically feeding recommendations ranged from benign to dangerous.


Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), often called the father of modern Psychology, mistakenly related sexuality and normal childhood genital touching to adult mental illness and crime. Breastfeeding was suddenly seen as a sexual act and was banned as unhealthy. This idea of combining breastfeeding and sexuality carries over today.

The psychologist John Watson (1878-1958) believed in rigorous behavioralism. After studying animals he concluded that all behavior was one of two types: stimulus or response. In 1918, he extended his research at John Hopkins to the principles of behavior in children. He was an outspoken advocate of extreme manipulation of the environment. Watson believed that suppressing the normal impulses of childhood with rigid schedules would lead to adult mental health. He frowned on outward displays of affection. Infants were to eat, sleep, even excrete at a specified time (Edwards and Waldorf 76). Akre notes that many principles and practices applied to human infants and lactation have no corollary in the animal kingdom (19).

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) influenced by Watson's writings, was an avid behaviorist. He also believed that behavior was controlled by the environment. Skinner recommended that a child be kept in a controlled environment and tried to prove his point by raising his own children in a padded box. Our modern day crib and bumper pads are said to be leftovers of "Skinner's Box." Babies were removed from the warmth and comfort of the family bed for the sake of mental health. This fostered a more distant, detached style of parenting.


Erik Erikson (1902-1994) was among the first psychologists to study normal, well-adjusted individuals. Erikson set forth a group of age-related developmental tasks. Each stage is a positive task verses a negative one. He believed that how the individual completes each task determines personal identity. The developmental task in the first year of life is: trust versus mistrust. An infant must learn that his needs are met to develop trust, if his needs are not met, the baby develops mistrust. The next task, typical of toddlers, is autonomy versus shame and doubt. Erikson's ages and stages of development continue throughout the life cycle.

After World War II, women entered the work force in great numbers. Women wanted, and often needed to work, but they had to work in an industrial setting that did not make provisions for a breastfeeding mother and baby. The need for human milk substitutes was greater than ever. Companies that mass-produced artificial baby milk were started.

As scientific methods improved, everything was reduced to cold, hard, sterile, "scientific" fact. Improvements in sterilization techniques made artificial baby milk safer. Formula was calculated to the last calorie, was measurable and was very much  a scientific process. Breastfeeding was not viewed as sterile nor was it the least bit scientific. It was not seen as measurable. Now that formula was considered "safe," nursing was banned as unhealthy and the push was on for "better" babies through "superior" infant formulas


By the sixties, the Space Age was on. Artificial baby milk was proclaimed the "modern way" to feed a baby. The formula industry was in full swing. During the seventies, the "Flower Children" and back to-nature movements were spawned. Going back to Mother Earth, the young women of these movements breastfed. But by the eighties, breastfeeding was still  not accepted as the norm. Today, although breastfeeding rates linger near 50%, at least one author believes that it is  "politically incorrect" to bottle feed (Gigliotti 315).


Unfortunately, there has been a resurgence in the "Monster Baby" idea along with detached parenting and parenting by rigid schedules. Several new books espouse the revitalization of rigid behaviorilist ideas of the past. These books and methods seem innovative and dazzling. They are tempting to the new parent who feels overwhelmed by the chaos a new baby generates. However, parenting by schedule is no more than a dangerous recycling of old ideas that were rightly abandoned years ago. The AAP is currently looking into one parenting by-the-clock program following numerous reports of slow gaining babies, failure to thrive, breast milk production difficulties and premature weaning (Arney 1, 2). The author's belief is that our society will continue to suffer from a myriad of ills until we place more emphasis on the well- being of our children. The emphasis must begin in infancy. With the infant far removed from the closeness of his parents,  not being comforted when he cries, fed or changed unless the schedule says its time, developing trust is in jeopardy.

So too is our future.






Copyright Marie Davis, RN, IBCLC 1999     
Last reviewedWed, Nov 8, 2006





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