“Where the Mother’s Milk is Insufficient…”: The Commodification of Infant Feeding and the Demise of Breastfeeding

Abstract

Long before physicians encouraged artificial feeding, print articles and advertisements persuaded mothers to use alternatives to breastmilk. This chapter traces social constructions in media from the days of wet nursing through the emergence of commercial formula . Foss argues that nineteenth-century media spearheaded the ideological shift in infant feeding perceptions and practice, establishing justifications for not breastfeeding that would still be used 125 years later. This chapter uses articles and advertisements in Ladies’ Home Journal (1883–1907), wet nurse advertisements, and medical journals to ascertain how and when women stopped trusting their bodies to feed their babies against medical recommendations. Messages of the 1900s suggest the medical community’s growing acceptance of artificial food , as doctors recommended homemade concoctions and endorsed manufactured infant food.