Militant Breastfeeding

I've breastfed both my children, and plan to do the same for any children I might have in the future.  There was never any question that I would choose breastfeeding as the way to nourish my babies.  Why pay money for an inferior food source, when my body makes a great one for free?

I've never read books about breastfeeding, or taken classes about how to do it...in other words, I never took it up as an an important "issue" to support or to spread the good news about (as I've done for other mommy topics like cloth diapers or using a doula).  It was just the natural thing for me to do as a mother, like most of my ancestors before me have surely done.
 

I understand that it's not always easy or possible for women to breastfeed, and I don't spend time worrying about the decisions of other women on feeding their babies (breast or bottle?  on-demand or by schedule?  mother-led or child-led weaning?, etc.).  Because, well, it doesn't really affect me or my kids personally.  I trust that most mothers love their kids, and do what they believe is best.

I don't get rapturous about ("the womanly art of") breastfeeding, calling it "beautiful" or focusing extensively on the special bond it produces between mother and child (although I wouldn't disagree with those who do).

But when it comes to breastfeeding in public - in other words, when it comes to allowing other people to be aware that you feed your baby in just the way that nature intended - my feelings seem to become more and more militant as time goes on.
 

I have to be in the company of other people sometimes, and I have to bring my kids with me.  If the baby is hungry, I need to feed her.  This should not be a problem.  And yet many people find the sight of a woman breastfeeding to be indecent, disgusting, or at least inconsiderate.  Despite the fact that they probably don't actually see any of the breast (unless perhaps they're looking really closely, or watching for a long time), some people become uncomfortable with the idea of a woman nursing a baby anywhere near them.
 

So while I am absolutely not the type of person to ever be in the vanguard of controversial public displays, I find myself trying more and more to muster up the courage to breastfeed in public without a nursing cover.

...but still discreetly, of course!  I'm not trying to offend.  I'm just trying to show, through my comfort and naturalness, that feeding a hungry baby with that food which is perfectly designed for human babies is a completely normal and sensible thing.  I don't want to give the appearance of being ashamed of something which is in no way shameful.

I am fully in support of these basic facts: Breastfeeding is natural.  Breastfeeding is the normal and ideal way of feeding babies.  Breasts exist for the purpose of feeding babies.
 

I am interested in digging a little more into the history of when these obvious truths started to seem...not so obvious.  It is clear that a big part of the problem today is that breasts have become so incredibly sexualized, that people have trouble conceiving of them in another way.  And most of the negatives reactions against breastfeeding mother aren't actually concerned with the exposed flesh or "immodesty."  Rather, it is because she is using her breast in a way which is not sexual or objectifying.

These cartoons sum up what I mean perfectly:

It's perfectly acceptable to many people to be subjected to barely-concealed breasts in every ad, commercial, and personal encounter throughout the day...but present them with an image of a mother feeding her child - probably revealing much less naked breast, if any at all - and suddenly, they act disgusted and offended?  It's not the breast itself, it's what the breast is being used for.
 

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I do have a fondness for images of the nursing Madonna.  But this has less to do with seeing Mary portrayed as the ideal of Motherhood, and more to do with the very humanity shown in this most basic of acts.

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Some bits and pieces I've gathered about breastfeeding trends in the past 200 years:

In Europe throughout most of the 1800s, women who could afford to sent their babies to a wet nurse.  St. Therese (French) and all her sisters were raised this way, and their parents would only see theie babies on occasional visits.

In America, breastfeeding by the child's own mother has always been more common.

Towards the middle of the 19th century and through much of the Victorian Era, strong ideals of a "cult of domesticity" and a very specific and separate "sphere" for women developed.  Rather than working alongside a husband doing the tasks required to run the property, women were left alone to manage the homes and regulate family life, while husbands went out to work in an office or a factory.  Nursing one's own children became an important aspect of proving your worth as a woman and a mother.  Recently, the Daily Mail published a series of old photographs (actually, daguerreotypes) of women breastfeeding babies from the mid 1800s.  Even in an age of much stricter ideals of modesty (wait, do we even still have ideals on modesty?), breastfeeding was not only considered an acceptable practice, but one to be lauded.

The first formulas came out in the 1860s, and by the turn of the century, formula feeding had become considered more socially proper, and was the norm for those who could afford it.  [did the woman's movement have some influence in this shift?  That's something to look into]

By the 1950s, only 20% of women breastfed, most of them poor or non-white.

During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a movement, started largely in the "hippie" community back towards breastfeeding (as well as natural birth).

And today, it has become in some ways the "trendy" thing to do, especially among white women and the upper-middle class (almost three-quarters of whom breastfeed, at least for some time).  It's essentially the opposite of the pattern in the 50s.

With many mothers in the workforce today, pumping and storing milk has become more common, as have special areas at the workplace designed for privacy while pumping.

Feel free to fill in any gaps in this rough timeline, because I find this to be a very interesting social and historical topic for study!

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But again, it doesn't matter if all of society is doing whatever the trendy thing is in regards to breastfeeding or not.

Women have breasts.  Breasts make milk.  Milk feeds babies.  

Just let me feed my baby when I need to without calling me gross or indecent!  Geez, it's hard enough already to be a mother.