Don't Kill Your Baby: Public Health and the Decline of Breastfeeding in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

""An outstanding contribution to the history of medicine and gender, Don't Kill Your Baby should be on the bookshelves of historians and health professionals as well as anyone interested in the way in which medical practice can be shaped by external forces."
-Margaret Marsh, Rutgers University

How did breastfeeding-once accepted as the essence of motherhood and essential to the well-being of infants-come to be viewed with distaste and mistrust? Why did mothers come to choose artificial food over human milk, despite the health risks? In this history of infant feeding, Jacqueline H. Wolf focuses on turn-of-the-century Chicago as a microcosm of the urbanizing United States. She explores how economic pressures, class conflict, and changing views of medicine, marriage, efficiency, self-control, and nature prompted increasing numbers of women and, eventually, doctors to doubt the efficacy and propriety of breastfeeding. Examining the interactions among women, dairies, and health care providers, Wolf uncovers the origins of contemporary attitudes toward and myths about breastfeeding.

Jacqueline H. Wolf is assistant professor in the history of medicine, Department of Social Medicine, Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and adjust assistant professor, Women's Studies Program, Ohio University.