Again referring to Elisabet Helsing's excellent reference book 'Boken om
amming' ISBN 82 05 22652 0, it seems that doctors as far back as Soranos
(100 A.D.) have been coming up with bright ideas that have disturbed
lactation.  Soranos held that women should not put the baby to breast until
3 weeks post partum, because the early milk was 'too strong' for them.
Helsing notes that in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, wet-nurses enjoyed
booming businesses, and that this often coincides with a highly developed
civilization with a flourishing culture of medicine MEN, who gladly gave
breastfeeding advice.  

I translate from page 216 in her book:
"The fashionable Parisian physician Jacques des Pars, who practiced around
1450, felt that the mother ought not to breastfeed during the lying-in
month, because her milk was unclean.  There was a special marketplace in the
city for wet-nurses, and regulations were put in place about how many babies
one wet-nurse was allowed to supply at one time, as well as how long she was
allowed to wet-nurse others in between her own childbirths. 
Likewise there were special rules for the carts that carried the wet-nurses
and their small foster babies to and from the wet-nurse's home, because of
the many fatal accidents that occurred when children were 'dropped' from the
carts during transport.  There was high mortality among these babies. As
late as the 19th century, about two thirds of them died each year."

She sums up the situation in a special text box on page 217: When the
proportion of women who breastfeed sinks, it is usually due to societal
conditions and not to lack of will or ability in the mothers.

On page 221 she cites a WHO survey of the breastfeeding situation in 9
countries around the world.  A common feature in every country was that the
more often the mothers were in contact with the health services, the less
they breastfed. Source: WHO (1981) Contemporary patterns of breastfeeding.
Report on the WHO Collaborative Study on Breastfeeding, p.149. WHO, Geneva

Historically, in Norway, the church also got involved, though not with the
same zeal for increasing the population that Gonneke describes.  From the
Older Borgarting's Christian Law which was the law of the land, from before
1387, (again, my translation of Helsing's book, p. 231):
"mothers were ordered to limit breastfeeding to 'no longer than two Lenten
periods and up to the start of the third'.  It was the husband's task to see
that breastfeeding was stopped in time, and if he wasn't man enough for the
job, there were hefty fines to pay, equivalent to the value of two or three
cows, from the wife's property if she were the unwilling one.  If the man
was an accomplice, he also had to pay the same amount from his own property.
It is thought that this, besides being a way to find ever new things to tax,
was meant as a way to protect society from excessive contraception - the
fertility decreasing effects of breastfeeding seem to have been well known.
The purpose may also have been to promote Christianity by keeping the
mothers from sneaking out of the sacrifices of Lent, since breastfeeding
women were exempt from these.
"The same law orders women to help their neighbors during childbirth, and
not to leave mother and child until the baby was at the breast.  If one
wants to romanticize, one can imagine that this was because they had a
better understanding that labor was not concluded before the baby had gone
from umbilical cord to breast, but the reason may be more prosaic.  It could
just as well have been a way of preventing the not uncommon infanticides,
which often occurred in unwilling and unhappy mothers.  The Christian church
was in principle opposed to this form of late abortion, and by putting the
baby to breast and letting it feed, it acquired status as a person with the
right to protection by law."

The historical documentation for the law requiring women to wean before the
third Lent season in Norway is incontrovertible, from a time when the law
and the church were synonymous.  Granted, it would allow women to breastfeed
until many children had reached the lower end of the range for child-led
weaning, but what about the ones who'd have preferred to keep right on for
another several years?

If anyone knows of a documented case of a society, past or present, in which
the impetus to abandon breastfeeding actually came from mothers,
independently of societal influence, please tell us about it.  I'm really
sorry that Boken om amming is not available in English.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway  

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html