Feeding babies, making mothers: The science, practice and meaning of breastfeeding in the second half of the 20th century

This dissertation traces the rise and decline of the scientific ideology of natural motherhood and its role in the history of the resurgence in breastfeeding in America in the second half of the 20th century. I explore the factors that influenced women’s decisions about infant feeding, including: hospital policies, attitudes and influence of nurses and physicians, the evolution of breast pumps as consumer devices, and changing ideas about sexuality, gender and family life. Through scientific and medical discourse, popular media, personal stories, and organizational histories, I argue that the connection between breastfeeding and the ideology of natural motherhood helped bring breastfeeding back from the brink of obsolescence after World War Two. In the 1930s, scientists in psychology, ethology and anthropology were beginning to articulate a framework of maternal behavior that emphasized the importance of psychology and instinct. Based on the study and reverence for “the natural” and biological abilities of females to bear, feed, and raise children, these ideas coalesced into what I refer to as “natural motherhood.” Characterized by parallels in maternal behavior observed between the human and animal worlds, and the “civilized” and “uncivilized” societies in the world, natural motherhood suggested that women harbored innate, instinctual behavioral knowledge about pregnancy, delivery, and breastfeeding. By the 1950s, natural motherhood had become a powerful cultural ideology that resonated with a growing number of women dissatisfied with modern life. Epitomized in the advocacy group La Leche League, breastfeeding mothers challenged the centrality of the husband in the home and suggested an alternative family structure. As women’s liberation and health movements emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s, the ideology became aligned with an increasingly anti-feminist and conservative mentality. By the end of the 20th century, the breast pump had helped usher in the era of the cyborg mother, as the technology promised to connect women to their natural role as breastfeeding mothers while simultaneously freeing them from the physical confines of “natural motherhood.