In my maternal-infant nutrition course at U of Washington nearly 20 years ago, an excellent and inspiring lecturer on BF (whose name, though not her lecture, escapes me), herself a physician and mother of several BF children, gave us stats on Bf rates in the US.  There were only a very few areas with recorded data, but the one I remember most was that the highest known BF rates in the US in 1959 were found among "wives of Harvard grad students".
This stuck with me because my father was a grad. student there in 1958-59, and my sibs were born in '59.  Twins, and they were partially breastfed from birth to about 3-4 months of age.  My mother was advised not to attempt full BF of both babies as that was obviously impossible (!) so they got bottles every other meal, oh well.  Have no idea whether my mother was in the database I heard cited as a nursing student two decades later, but someone was at least keeping some kind of track already way back then in the dark ages of American lactation.
BTW, our pediatrician was a very nice man (I still recall the pleasant atmosphere in the office) who shared office space with a dynamic young pediatrician called Brazelton.
Rachel

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