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Breastfeeding and Health Professionals in Britain, New Zealand and the United States, 1900–1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Linda Bryder
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
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Modern medical opinion is almost universally in favour of breastfeeding as the best food for newborn infants. Yet this was not always the case. American social historian Rima Apple has argued convincingly that medical attitudes in the United States undermined breastfeeding in the first half of the twentieth-century. She explains how the concept of “scientific motherhood”, successfully promoted by the medical profession during the first half of the twentieth century, “fostered the acceptance of, when not the wholesale commitment to, bottle feeding under physician-supervision”. In her recent book on breastfeeding in the United States, Jacqueline Wolf argues that while many doctors in the United States supported breastfeeding, they inadvertently undermined it by advocating routine feeding and by providing a viable alternative through milk formulas. Considering the experience of breastfeeding in two further environments, Britain and New Zealand, contributes to the discussion of the role of health professionals in promoting breastfeeding. Doctors in Britain and New Zealand did not promote the move from breast to bottle, as Apple found in America. Nor did they appear to undermine breastfeeding by their advocacy of routine feeding. The decline in breastfeeding occurred later than in America. It coincided with the new fashion for “demand feeding”, and with a new movement to medicalize breastfeeding itself. A study of breastfeeding in different countries and over time indicates that the attitudes and advice of health professionals were significant factors in the success or otherwise of breastfeeding.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 Rima D Apple, ‘A century of infant feeding in the United States and New Zealand’, in S Atkins, K Kirkby, P Thomas, J Pearn (eds), Outpost medicine: Australasian Studies on the History of Medicine, Third National Conference of the Australian Society of the History of Medicine, Hobart, 1993, University of Tasmania, 1994, pp. 303–10, p. 304.

2 Jacqueline H Wolf, Don't kill your baby: public health and the decline of breastfeeding in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 2001. See also Jacqueline H Wolf, ‘Don't kill your baby’: feeding infants in Chicago, 1903–1924', J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1998, 53: 219–53.

3 Richard A Meckel, Save the babies: American public health reform and the prevention of infant mortality 1850–1929, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990, p. 57.

4 See I Loudon, Death in childbirth: an international study of maternal care and maternal mortality 1800–1950, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 352–7; J Leavitt, ‘Joseph DeLee and the practice of preventive obstetrics’, Am. J. Public Health, 1988, 78 (10): 1353–61, pp. 1353–9.

5 Meckel, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 52.

6 Cited by F Truby King, ‘Physiological economy in the nutrition of infants’, New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) 1907, 6: 79.

7 J Brennemann, ‘Psychologic aspects of nutrition in childhood’, J. Pediatr., Aug. 1932, 1 (2): p. 152; see also C Anderson Aldrich, ‘Science and art in child nourishment’, J. Pediatr., Oct. 1932, 1 (4): 418.

8 Harold Waller, Clinical studies in lactation, London, William Heinemann, 1938, p. 4.

9 See Deborah Dwork, War is good for babies and other young children: a history of the infant and child welfare movement in England 1898–1918, London, Tavistock Publications, 1987.

10 Cited in New Zealand Department of Health, Annual Report 1907, Appendices of the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1907, H-31, p. viii.

11 J C Spence, ‘Encouragement of breast feeding’, Mother and Child, 10, 5, Aug. 1939, 1 (4): 169–72, p. 170.

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15AJHR, H-31, 1907, p. 39, cited in L Bryder, A voice for mothers: the Plunket Society and infant welfare 1907–2000, Auckland University Press, 2003, p. 6.

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17New Zealand Herald, 3 Feb. 1908, cited in Bryder, op. cit., note 15 above, p. 6; “nursing” and “suckling” were euphemisms for breastfeeding.

18 See, for example, Andrew Balfour and H H Scott, Health problems of the empire: past, present and future, London, W Collins, 1924, p. 182. These New Zealand statistics did not include Maori infant mortality.

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21 Plunket Society, Annual Report, 1912–13, p. 11. Wet nursing had never been a viable alternative for middle-class women in New Zealand. Just as there was a perennial shortage of domestic servants, so there was a dearth of women for this occupation; neither attracted Maori women. See also Sue Kedgley, Mum's the word: the untold story of motherhood in New Zealand, Auckland, Random House, 1996, p. 11.

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27 E Pritchard, ‘Changes in fashion in infant feeding’, Mother and Child, Aug. 1932, 3 (5): 193.

28 Plunket Society, Auckland Branch, 25th Annual Report, 1933.

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37Mother and Child, Dec. 1933, 4 (9): 371. Emphasis added.

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41 Philippa Mein Smith, Maternity in dispute: New Zealand 1920–1939, Wellington, NZ, Historical Publications Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1986. The hospitalization of Maori women in childbirth occurred slightly later and related to Maori urbanization, at 17 per cent in 1938 and 90 per cent by 1960; ibid., p. 64.

42 Deem, op. cit., note 22 above, pp. 539–56.

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59 O K Orris to H Deem, 17 July 1953, PSA 576.

60 Gwen Johnson to H Deem, 22 July 1953, PSA 576.

61 Gwen Evans to H Deem, 23 July 1953, PSA 576.

62 Plunket nurse to H Deem, 13 July 1953, PSA 576.

63 Kathleen Lee to H Deem, 31 July 1953, PSA 576. Telephones were fairly widespread in 1950s New Zealand.

64 Doris L Williams to H Deem, 20 July 1953, PSA 576; in 1937 one Plunket nurse had suggested that a bonus be given to all mothers who breastfed: Evidence to Committee of Inquiry into Maternity Services, 1937, Nurse Arnott, 11 Aug. 1937, MS 78, Library Archives, Auckland Museum.

65The Weekly News, 6 Feb. 1946.

66 Mrs F R Mitchell, General Secretary, Royal College of Midwives, letter to the editor, Mother and Child, April 1949, 20 (1): 22.

67 Professor Gavin C Arneil, Department of Child Health, University Glasgow, ‘Results of a dietary survey of Scottish children in relation to the return of infantile rickets’, Mother and Child, Aug. 1968: 9–12, p. 9.

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69Dominion, 21 Nov. 1952; the results were published after Deem's death, NZMJ, 1958, 57: 539–56.

70 Plunket Society, Wellington Branch minutes, 18 Aug. 1938.

71 Plunket Society, Report of Twenty-ninth General Conference, 1948, p. 15.

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73Dominion, 22 June 1938.

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76 M I Nicholls to A W S Thompson, 7 July 1954, PSA 580.

77 K V Marriott, ‘The Plunket Society: some opinions’, Public Health thesis, University of Otago, 1963, p. 11.

78 M Spencer to Plunket Society President and Council, 18 Dec.1937, PSA 239.

79 John Forfar, ‘Changing paediatric perceptions and perspectives’, in John O Forfar (ed.), Child health in a changing society, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 272.

80 Mary Dobbie, The trouble with women: the story of Parents' Centre New Zealand, Whatamongo Bay, Cape Catley, 1990, p. 23.

81 Ibid., p. 32.

82 Grantly Dick Read, Revelation of childbirth: the principles and practice of natural childbirth, London, W Heinemann, Medical Books, 1942, reprinted annually until 1953, latterly as Childbirth without fear. Dick Read officially hyphenated his name in 1958. See also Mary Thomas (ed.), Post-war mothers: childbirth letters to Grantly Dick-Read, 1946–1956, University of Rochester Press, 1997.

83 Dick Read to Mrs Gayle Aiken, 14 June 1950, PP/GDR/D.268, Wellcome Library, Manuscripts and Archives.

84 Kedgley, op. cit., note 21 above, p. 177.

85 Sigmund Freud, The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. VII: Three essays on the theory of sexuality (1901–1905), transl. J Strachey, London, Hogarth Press, 1953, p. 182.

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87 Melitta Schmideberg, ‘The psychological care of the baby’, Mother and Child, November 1935, 6 (8): 304–8, p. 306.

88 Dick Read to Charlotte and Gayle Aiken, USA, 1948, PP/GDR/D265; Dick Read to Charlotte Aiken, 14 Sept. 1951, PP/GDR/D269, Wellcome Library, Manuscripts and Archives.

89 Book review of B Spock, The pocket book of baby and child care, in Mother and Child, Nov. 1956, 27 (8): 192.

90 C Anderson Aldrich and Mary M Aldrich, Babies are human beings, New York, Macmillan, 1938, republished in Britain as Understanding your baby, London, Black, 1939, cited in Cathy Urwin and Elaine Sharland, ‘From bodies to minds in childcare literature’, in Roger Cooter (ed.), In the name of the child: health and welfare 1880–1940, London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 187–8.

91 C Anderson Aldrich, ‘Science and art in child nourishment’, J. Pediatr., Oct. 1932, 1 (4): 418.

92Mothercraft Training Society Nurses League Magazine, summer 1958, p. 19, reprinted from Nursing Times, 21 March 1958.

93 Katherine Arnup, Education for motherhood: advice for mothers in twentieth century Canada, University of Toronto Press, 1994, p. 99.

94 Modern Mothercraft, Official Handbook, Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children, 2nd ed., Dunedin, 1953, p. 63.

95 J C Spence, ‘The encouragement of breast feeding’, Mother and Child, Aug. 1939, 10 (5): 169–72, p. 171.

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97 K H Waller, ‘The importance of breast feeding’, Mother and Child, Aug. 1952, 23 (5): 126–7, p. 127.

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99 Plunket Society, Report of Twenty-ninth General Conference, 1948, p.15.

100 Wilson, op. cit., note 98 above, p. 27.

101 Mavis Gunther, ‘Feeding in the first days’, Mother and Child, July 1955, 26 (4): 102–7, pp. 103–4.

102 ‘Commentary’, Mother and Child, Nov. 1961, 32 (8): 187; also refers to The Times, 6 September 1961, Medical Research Council, Special Report Series 296, 1959.

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104 World Health Organization Report, ‘Nutrition in pregnancy and lactation’, Mother and Child, Oct. 1965, p. 17.

105 Melanie Nolan, Breadwinning: New Zealand women and the state, Christchurch, Canterbury University Press, 2000, p. 220.

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108 Editorial, Mother and Child, July 1955, 26 (4): 87.

109 Walker, op. cit., note 103 above, p. 47.

110 Justin D Call, from the Department of Psychology, UCLA Medical School, ‘Emotional factors causing successful breastfeeding of infants’, J. Pediatr., 1959, 55: 485–93.

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112 Janette Briggs and Bridget Bridget, Maternal and infant care in Wellington 1978: a health care consumer study in replication, Department of Health Special Report Series 64, Wellington, Government Printer, 1983, p. 56; Hood, et al., op. cit., note 107 above, pp. 273–6.

113 Mary White to Hugh Jolly, 4 May 1976, GC/143/12/2, Wellcome Library, Manuscripts and Archives.

114 Wolf, Don't kill your baby, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 197.

115New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 1907, vol. 140, p. 856.

116 Plunket Society, Annual Report 1912–13, p. 11.

117Christchurch Press, 16 Nov. 1962.