Black Breastfeeding | Breastfeeding...It's a Beautiful Thing

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Part 1 | Breastfeeding and Men: Highway of Love
Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Last week I had a very rigorous debate about my Capessa.com article on the Mothering message boards where my article's title, When Nursing in Public was Normal, was questioned about its historical accuracy. Although I don't claim to be omniscient about everything in history, I do stand by the photographs I discover because essentially photos don't lie. It's really that simple. After doing a little research on Saturday, I was able to further stand by my article's title.

I also claimed that the picture of the woman breastfeeding in public in 1943 in the Greyhound station showed that even among men (who were present) breastfeeding was not a problem, but rather simply a way of life.The following question (which was both very good and quite reasonable) was raised:

How do you know there wasn't disgust on their faces a moment before, or a moment after? The pictures only capture that ONE instant of time... maybe the men saw someone taking a picture and looked at the camera instead. Maybe she had just latched the baby on and they hadn't noticed yet. You just can't know that they were all ok with it from that picture.

The reason I know is because after going through a lot of breastfeeding pictures I can say with certainly that among the rural class, breastfeeding was a daily constant and didn't elicit feelings of disgust from men, even in public. It just "was".

Note: Every day this week I will post a photograph supporting my opinion about men and breastfeedng instead of creating an insanely looong photo gallery.

Here is a sharecropper family in July 1936 in Hazlehurst, Georgia. Notice the mother is openly breastfeeding and the father isn't giving it a second thought.

And here. This is a very interesting set of photos by Dorothea Lange. Lange's caption says:

Example of self-resettlement in California. Oklahoma farm family on highway between Blythe and Indio. Forced by the drought of 1936 to abandon their farm, they set out with their children to drive to California. Picking cotton in Arizona for a day or two at a time gave them enough for food and gas to continue. On this day, they were within a day's travel of their destination, Bakersfield, California. Their car had broken down en route and was abandoned.

From the numbers assigned to the photos this is the sequence of events.

The whole family is waiting and watching at the edge of the highway.

Then the mom decides to go take a seat while the older son stays near the highway with his dad.

Their baby was probably hungry, tired and hot, so mama decided to nurse him in public on the highway. This is yet another example of how nusing in public just "was" and was a non-issue to moms, dads and children.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, Reproduction Numbers: LC-USF34-009682-E DLC, LC-USF34-009685-E DLC, LC-USF34-009680-C DLC, LC-USF34-017695-C DLC, LC-USW3-037912-E DLC

Labels: breastfeeding history

posted by Jennifer James @ 6:15 AM,

9 Comments:

At September 25, 2007 12:12 PM, Ms. Kiki said...: GREAT pictures!! I look forward to seeing more. :)
At September 25, 2007 5:49 PM, LLL mom said...: Why are You creating your own narrative to these historic photos?
At September 25, 2007 5:57 PM, Jennifer James said...: LLL mom -- expound.
At September 26, 2007 3:57 PM, Housefairy said...: I enjoy your blog, and thank you for sharing these fantastic pictures with the rest of the world.

Clearly these were from a time, not so long ago, when simple daily events had not yet been made into commercialised, sexualized perversions. The baby wanted milk, the mom gave him some.

There is big, big money to be made by the formula industry, via the doctors and the media, trying to tell us that this is anything but completely normal. Look how recently this was--and look where we are today.

Keep up the good work.
At September 27, 2007 12:39 PM, Jennifer James said...: Hi Housefairy -- Thank you for the kind words about my blog. You're right -- when baby needed to eat, mama fed him.
At September 27, 2007 11:00 PM, Linda said...: Love the photos, but a request -- would it be possible to link them to larger images?
At September 28, 2007 6:48 PM, Jennifer James said...: Hi Linda,

Most of the pictures you can click on to enlarge. Some aren't as crisp. Sorry about that :(
At September 30, 2007 11:47 AM, SAHMmy Says said...: I'm loving your series! And the perspective on the feelings about nursing in the 30's. My great grandma was a migrant farmer's wife...they travelled from Oklahoma to California a la Grapes of Wrath...she used to say the babies were the best fed in the bunch--all she needed for herself was water and her milk kept up fine. Strangely, by the time my grandma had children in the late 40's, it was all about the bottle.
At October 7, 2007 1:20 AM, Azúcar said...: I have tears streaming down my face.

This is amazing, amazing work you're doing. Thank you, thank you for helping me prove that NIP was a non-issue--and I'm the one with the history degree! It's one thing to tell people that nursing a toddler is normal, but quite another to see physical evidence.