It is difficult to think of many things more natural than breastfeeding, yet by 1970 only about 25 per cent of Canadian mothers were initiating the practice.
That was largely due to attitudes about science that proliferated in the 1940s and 1950s coupled with aggressive marketing of alternative mass-produced formulas.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the only real alternative to a mother’s own breast milk was wet-nursing by another lactating woman. Of course, that was only widely available to upper class women and infants of mothers who could not physically produce milk had very poor prospects for survival.
With the rising numbers of women entering the workforce in the late 1800s and early 1900s combined with advancements in nutrition science, both the demand and supply of supplementary infant nutrition steadily rose.
“Growing up in the 1950-60s, I don’t think I ever saw a mother breastfeeding and our generation didn’t even know that the human breast was designed to feed a baby,” wrote registered nurse Susan Miller for Island Parent Magazine in 2011. “The female breast had become sexualized in society and “nice girls” were careful not to expose any part of their breasts when going out. By 1960, almost every woman gave birth in a hospital, and physicians and nurses were giving infant feeding advice around formula feeding. Other hospital practices at the time both directly and indirectly affected women’s breastfeeding success.”
While that has been steadily changing since the 1970s, at least behind closed doors, the stigma of public breastfeeding has remained, which according to proponents, is a shame because it limits new mothers’ full participation in society.
Heidi Russel, a lactation consultant for the Yorkton Regional Health Centre (YRHC) says that is changing now as well
“Definitely it is coming back,” she said. “I was born in the 1970s and my mother told me that breastfeeding was around, but it wasn’t really promoted. Formula feeding was kind of seen as the thing to do. I think breastfeeding is coming back into our culture because there’s just so much evidence-based research saying that human milk is made for human babies and that’s what our human babies should be consuming.
“It’s bringing back that natural part of motherhood and childhood and supporting it because if you’re coming from a generation that didn’t see a lot of breastfeeding maybe you don’t understand it, maybe you’re uncomfortable with the idea of it, but in the last five years that I’ve been working in this position, I’ve seen a change happening, people are getting out there, they’re being more comfortable.”
Locally, part of that is because of the efforts of the Baby-Friendly Initiative (BFI) Working Group and events such as the Quintessence Breastfeeding Challenge that took place October 3 at Gallagher Centre.
“We picked this Saturday along with the Quintessence challenge, which is a global challenge that happens across the globe, and it’s really just supporting and promoting breastfeeding, having moms come together in a public area and latching on at 11 o-clock in the morning,” Russel explained.
We have businesses signing on and getting a tool kit, which educates their employees and they get a decal that they can put in their window or their door so that breastfeeding families can identify that that business welcomes breastfeeding within their business.
The working group’s latest project is “Baby Friendly Business,” which dovetails with the World Breastfeeding Week (October 1 - 7) theme of “Making it work.”
“We have businesses signing on and getting a tool kit, which educates their employees and they get a decal that they can put in their window or their door so that breastfeeding families can identify that that business welcomes breastfeeding within their business,” Russel said.
On Saturday BFI welcomed Gallagher Centre to the fold as general manager Paul Keys unveiled a semi-private breastfeeding area complete with a comfy leather armchair donated by Ruff’s Furniture.
In Canada, a woman’s right to breastfeed in public is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as interpreted by the Supreme Court. The British Columbia Human Rights Commission has codified female workers’ right to breastfeed in its Policies and Procedures Manual.
