[From a longer article, ARE BABY MANUALS PRIMERS IN CHILD CARE OR LESSONS IN HISTORY? by Dr John Collee, Copyright 1996, Guardian Newspapers Limited, pub. February 18, 1996] Apologies to Kathy Dettwyler in advance. ;-) [...the Victorian period] has to be a low point in the history of childhood. Breast-feeding was supported by both science and the religion of the day but, ironically, in the very attempt to popularise it many of the manuals written by doctors served only to put women off by devising complicated techniques for the whole process. Throughout the 19th century the advertising of baby foods and milk substitutes assured their popularity despite the primitive state of bottle feeding equipment. Old-fashioned teats of vulcanised rubber 'smelled disgusting, stiffened after repeated use and perished internally'; the alternatives were teats made of chamois leather or, most unappealing of all, the pickled teat of a young calf. The notion of sterilising these things was alien to most people " which may partly account for the huge rise in infant mortality towards the end of Victoria's reign. The typically Victorian evils of prudishness and over-rigorous discipline left European babies shell shocked till well after the First World War. Those women who attempted to breast-feed were encumbered by ridiculous contraptions such as the 'anti-embarrassment device' for nursing mothers, patented in 1910, which consisted of a harness cupping the breasts, with rubber tube extensions over the nipples and a teat at the end for the baby. When breast-feeding did get under way again, with the Mothercraft Movement of the 1920s and 30s, it was still constrained by military-style feeding schedules that probably had their roots in the disciplinarian regimes of large orphanages. These rigid schedules led to 'a generation of hungry, thwarted babies' whose self-esteem was permanently damaged by the long night-time sessions of supposedly therapeutic crying. (You'll note that, until quite recently, this particular generation of babies was running our country.) It was high time for a libertarian counterblast and it came with women writers such as Margaret Ribble, ahead of her time in 1943, who championed close physical contact of mother and child in the early months and advocated prolonged breast-feeding.... Arly Helm [log in to unmask] (MS, Nutrition & Food Sciences, CLE, IBCLC; LC for IHC)