I have one thought about why some cultures might have gotten to the point of
not breastfeeding their babies, as a general rule. I wonder if high infant
mortality rates resulted in women attempting to protect themselves from
grief by not getting attached to their babies, in the first place. Of
course the practice of artificial feeding greatly increased the mortality
rates, but individual cultures often hang onto ideas, despite glaring
physical evidence of the fallacy of them (including modern Western
cultures). Also, once a practice has become common, people often perpetuate
it with no idea of how, or why, it ever started in the first place. I
suspect that religious beliefs would have played a part in the establishment
of a practice of artificial infant feeding, too, if people believed in
predestination and therefore did not feel like anything they did affected
whether or not a baby survived. I would be willing to bet that there were
many young mothers who had the instinct to want to breastfeed their babies
and had to be dissuaded from doing so.
I would love to hear more about this topic, including such practices as more
wealthy women having their babies breastfed by others, and also the belief
that colostrum was poisonous.
Darillyn
"After reading the interesting post from Rachel on infant feeding history in
Iceland and Norway, along with a great talk I heard yesterday at a
conference
by Anne Merewood on the history of infant formula, I have a couple of
pondering questions.
Why do women not want to breastfeed their children? Now, I am talking
about
the past when I asked this question not the modern day mother. According
to
history, women having been trying to give their babies other food and drink
besides breast milk long before any formula companies were developed.
Certainly these companies took an advantage of a trend they observed and
then
pushed it even more. But why did women look to not give their own milk, or
any
human milk to their babies when it is readily there and so nurturing?
Maybe someone with an anthropology background or sociology may help me
understand this.
I wonder if the human, who thinks about their world and questions it verses
just flowing with instinctual traits, messes us up?
Ann Perry, RN IBCLC
Boston, MA"
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