Shjyra

We use cookies to analyze our traffic and to allow the best experience possible. We also share information about your use of our site with analytics partners. Please click "accept" to consent to the use of such cookies. Without your consent, only the essential and functional cookies will be installed, which are necessary to display our website correctly. More information: Privacy & cookie policy I allow cookies Close Blog The History of Mother Breastfeeding Baby: a breastfeeding timeline Breastfeeding has had a very long and often turbulent history in the Western world. The necessity of mothers to feed their children has been the subject of many political conversations, debates and even laws! We take a look into the history behind mother breastfeeding baby, and how we have come to the accepting pro-choice society we enjoy today. 25 June 2019 Breastfeeding has been a significant part of becoming a mother since time began. It has a fascinating history around the world, including being a legal requirement in Germany, links to Greek goddesses, and featuring in many famous works of art. We delve a bit deeper into the origins of mother’s milk in history. The powerful benefits of breastfeeding has its roots in Greek mythology, when the goddess Hera’s breastmilk made Hercules invincible. Whilst it may not make your baby invincible, the benefits of mother’s milk for both your child and you, are undeniable. Wet nurses, who are women who are employed specifically to breastfeed and care for another woman’s baby, were used by noble women and royalty throughout the 1600’s – when over half of all European mothers were sending their babies to be wet nursed. Breastfeeding in art started to come into prominence in this period – with Jean-Laurent Mosnier’s The Young Mother one of the best-known examples of mother feeding her child in art. Breastfeeding in some countries was also made mandatory by law, such as in France in 1793, when it was declared that women who didn’t breastfeed would be ineligible for welfare. Germany went one step further and made breastfeeding a legal requirement for all healthy women in 1794. By the early 1800’s, women across Europe started to want to breastfeed their own babies again. Breastfeeding became almost a feminist issue as women proudly recognised their right to feed their children, however they wanted to. It is fair to say over the years breastfeeding has evolved dramatically, but one thing that has not changed is the overwhelming benefits of mother’s milk! Know more facts about the history of breastfeeding? Share with us on Facebook here My Breastfeeding Story Icon 2019 Previous: My Breastfeeding Story: Initial doubts and wanting to pursue natural breastfeeding Next: Mothers milk, Everyday Amazing – 10 Facts You May Not Know About Breast Milk Sign up to our newsletter Blog ©2018 Medela AG VIEW FULL SITE

Good hisyory

TRYING TO GET THE VERY LAST DROPS DOUBLEX The Worst Baby Advice Ever Smear your baby in lard! Feed the infant bacon and eggs! By LIBBY COPELAND NOV 23, 20127:00 AM New York 1898. New York 1898 Illustration from Sporting Life/Cecil Raleigh and Seymour Hicks/Library of Congress. In the annals of bad baby advice, a dubious prize goes to Tennessee preacher Michael Pearl, who provoked outrage last year when it came to light that a book he’d written with his wife, To Train Up a Child, was allegedly linked to the deaths of three children by abuse and neglect. An advocate of training children the way one might “stubborn mules,” Pearl recommends eliminating the “selfish compulsion” of 6-month-old babies by striking them with wooden spoons or “flexible tubing.” In a less violent vein, according to this recent video clip, he also believes that devoted mothers can potty-train their infants by the time they’re 2 weeks old. ADVERTISEMENT Inspired by Pearl (and the tale of a 1960s Miami pediatrician who believed in feeding solids to newborns; more about that below), I decided to survey the worst advice given to parents, going back to the 1700s. What stands out most in these books is the chiding tone espoused by the mostly male physicians writing them. From the 1700s until the mid-20th century, when Dr. Benjamin Spock advocated a gentler, instinct-based approach to parenting in The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, science was often positioned in opposition to motherly instinct, and mothers were repeatedly criticized for being “anxious, well-meaning, but ignorant,” as one 1916 book put it. Of course, it was often the so-called experts who were ignorant. Scottish physician William Buchan’s 1804 book Advice to Mothers informed them that “in all cases of dwarfishness or deformity, ninety-nine out of a hundred are owing to the folly, misconduct or neglect of mothers.” Some of the tips—like infant lard baths—are not necessarily bad, just strange to contemporary eyes. And some are remarkable only for the fact that they were necessary. An 1878 book called Advice to Mother informed said mother that she should not give her baby gin to relieve flatulence. A 1749 essay by a physician advised changing infants’ clothing frequently because clean clothes didn’t, in fact, “rob them of their nourishing Juices.” Here are the other choice examples: A Spoiled Baby Is a Socialist Baby Before Spock’s 1946 book, a strict approach dominated baby advice books. Experts advised mothers to keep infants on schedules for feeding and sleeping. Holding them just for the sake of it was considered a sure way to produce what a 1911 text termed a “little tyrant.” As the U.S. Department of Labor observed in an “Infant Care” pamphlet in 1929, “a baby should learn that such habitual crying will only cause his parents to ignore him.” ADVERTISEMENT Under the behaviorist thinking pioneered by psychologist John B. Watson and others, spoiling a baby was an immoral act that could forever curdle a child’s character. Watson advised parents “never” to “hug and kiss” their children. A 1916 book warned parents not to bounce babies on their knees, as it would spoil babies and lead to “wrecked nerves.” In general, wrote physician L. Emmett Holt in 1894, playing with babies was a bad idea: “Never until four months, and better not until six months.” As late as 1962, well after Spock’s kinder, gentler approach had become a staple of nightstands across the country, a Miami pediatrician named Walter W. Sackett Jr. came out with a book called Bringing Up Babies, in which he implied that parents who failed to impose strict schedules on their babies were downright unpatriotic. Absolutely no night feedings, he wrote, no matter how young the baby, nor how much it cried. “If we teach our offspring to expect everything to be provided on demand, we must admit the possibility that we are sowing the seeds of socialism,” Sackett warned, likening overindulgent parents to Hitler and Stalin. Toilet Train Your Newborns If there is one pervasive theme in baby advice books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is a preoccupation with the bowels. Much of it traces to concern over diarrhea-causing infections that killed many infants, though “sluggish bowels” were also a concern. “If we lock up the bowels, we confine the enemy and thus produce mischief,” British doctor Pye Henry Chavasse warned in 1878. ADVERTISEMENT The daily drudgery of cleaning dirty cloth diapers may have been part of the impetus for recommendations to toilet train newborns, but experts often added a moral component. In 1935, a U.S. Department of Labor “Infant Care” pamphlet called an infant’s regulation of his bowels and bladder a key part of his “character building.” Mothers were instructed to start bowel training their babies at 2 months of age, holding the baby over the “chamber” at the precise same time each day, and “using a soap stick, if necessary” to provoke a movement. By 6 to 8 months, the pamphlet predicted, the baby would be trained, and by 10 months, parents could start in on bladder training. As an added benefit to the mother’s cleaning chores, said infant “will begin to learn that he is part of a world bigger than that of his own desires.” Don’t Poison the Baby With Angry Breast Milk Several advice books suggested that mothers could harm their babies by thinking the wrong sorts of thoughts. The Sadlers, husband-and-wife doctors who collected their wisdom in 1916, blamed “angry” mothers for causing their babies’ colic. Mothers could also run dry by engaging in “worry, grief, or nagging,” they wrote. In his 1877 book, Advice to a Wife, Chavasse informed mothers not to nurse for too long. Once the baby was past 9 months of age, nursing could cause “brain disease” in babies and blindness in mothers. Watch Out for the Wet Nurse (and Baby Nurse, and Washerwoman …) ADVERTISEMENT By the turn of the 20th century, infant care manuals had become “staples in the middle-class American nursery,” medical historian Howard Markel observes, and the women reading them were informed that the lower-class women helping with their child care brought all manner of diseases and bad habits into their homes. “Mothers cannot be too watchful of nursemaids,” advised a “Mrs. Max West,” the author of a 1914 U.S. government pamphlet, writing that these “vicious” women might leave babies in wet diapers or feed them candy. One 1916 book, The Mother and Her Child, went so far as to suggest that nurses shouldn’t expect too much pay, since they were getting something “money cannot buy” by being permitted to live in the edifying environment of an upper-class home. Meanwhile, washerwomen were apt to wash a baby’s clothes in corrosive “soda” and deny it, Chavasse observed in 1878. Wet nurses were most suspicious of all. Some of this is understandable, as it was feared they could transmit diseases like tuberculosis and syphilis to their newborn charges. But many other warnings communicated the class tensions inherent in such hires. The Mother and Her Child advised against hiring single mothers; if a woman had more than one illegitimate child, she was apt to be “mentally deficient.” Chavasse’s book advised that parents inspect the wet nurse’s nipples (they had to be “sufficiently long”), and make sure she didn’t “menstruate during suckling,” or eat pastries and gravies, both of which would harm the milk. He mandated the wet nurse’s 10 p.m. bedtime. Last, he suggested prospective employers have the wet nurse milk her product into a glass so parents could ascertain that it was bluish-white in color, and “sweet to the taste.” Lard Baths ADVERTISEMENT Several advice books around the turn of the century advised that newborns be “well smeared” in lard, olive oil, or “fresh butter.” “Some kind of grease is needed” for the removal of the waxy vernix coating babies are born with, explained one book. After a week of daily oilings, mothers could move on to soap and water. Start Solids at 2 Days Old After World War II, commercial baby food producers as well as pediatricians drastically lowered the age at which they recommended babies start solids. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, much to the delight of Gerber and Beech-Nut, the average age at which parents introduced solids plummeted from 7 months to four to 6 weeks, according to various surveys. Sackett, the same guy who feared insufficient strictness would lead to socialist babies, was at the leading edge of this trend, writing in 1962 that breast milk and formula were “deficient,” and therefore babies should be started on cereal at 2 days of age. At 10 days, they could have strained vegetables, and by 9 weeks old, the little one would be eating “bacon and eggs, just like Dad!” Sackett also recommended giving babies black coffee starting at 6 months of age, to get them used to “the normal eating habits of the family.” * * * ADVERTISEMENT These days, we know more about the basics of infant nutrition and medical care, and don’t waste time worrying about angry, brain-maiming breast milk. But we do fixate on matters of style (attachment parenting or cry-it-out from the nursery?), as well as the finer details of infant care (solids at 4 months or 6)? We also know that there are many matters for which we will probably never have definitive scientific answers. As historian Markel pointed out to me, there are ethical problems with experimental trials on babies, and besides, there’s not much money to be gained in testing, for instance, whether babies should be rocked or ignored in the middle of the night. If “there’s no drug, no procedure” being tested, Markel says, there’s “not likely to be funding.” If it’s any consolation, surveying the fads of past advice can give you some perspective on contemporary ones. There may never be a baby book that offers the conclusive answer to every question, but it’s possible to extract some wisdom from the suffering of past generations of parents. Does the book you’re reading contradict itself repeatedly, require you to override all your parental instincts, or send you into a panic over your own inadequacy? If so, burn it. Reprints Advertise: Site / Podcasts Commenting Contact / Feedback Pitch guidelines Corrections About us Work with us Send us tips User agreement Privacy policy AdChoices FOLLOW US Facebook Twitter Instagram Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. All contents © 2019 The Slate Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Baby boom

Skip to main content Toggle navigation SEARCH Page Page History of child rights International standards have advanced dramatically over the past century – explore the milestones. James Grant (Executive Director, UNICEF), Jan Martenson (Under-Secretary-General for Human Rights and Director, United Nations, Geneva) and Audrey Hepburn (Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF) at a UNICEF press conference as the UN General Assembly adopts the Convention on the Rights of the Child. UNICEF/UN0279228/John Isaac/UN Photo In the industrialized countries of the early twentieth century, there were no standards of protection for children. It was common for them to work alongside adults in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. Growing recognition of the injustices of their situation, propelled by greater understanding of the developmental needs of children, led to a movement to better protect them. International standards on child rights have advanced dramatically over the past century, but gaps remain in meeting those ideals. Timeline of child rights 1924 The League of Nations adopts the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child, drafted by Eglantyne Jebb, founder of the Save the Children Fund. The Declaration articulates that all people owe children the right to: means for their development; special help in times of need; priority for relief; economic freedom and protection from exploitation; and an upbringing that instils social consciousness and duty. 1946 The United Nations General Assembly establishes the International Children’s Emergency Fund, UNICEF, with an emphasis on children throughout the world. 1948 The United Nations General Assembly passes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Article 25 entitles mothers and children to ‘special care and assistance’ and ‘social protection’. 1959 The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which recognizes, among other rights, children’s rights to education, play, a supportive environment and health care. 1966 With the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, United Nations Member States promise to uphold equal rights – including education and protection – for all children. 1968 The International Conference on Human Rights is convened to evaluate the progress made by countries in the 20 years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An agenda for future work is drafted and national commitments to upholding human rights are bolstered. 1973 The International Labour Organization adopts Convention 138, which sets 18 as the minimum age for undertaking work that might be hazardous to a person’s health, safety or morals. 1974 Concerned about the vulnerability of women and children in emergency and conflict situations, the General Assembly calls on Member States to observe the Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict. The Declaration prohibits attacks against or imprisonment of civilian women and children, and upholds the sanctity of the rights of women and children during armed conflict. 1978 The Commission on Human Rights puts forth a draft of a Convention on the Rights of the Child for consideration by a working group of Member States, agencies and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. 1979 To mark the twentieth anniversary of the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the United Nations General Assembly declares 1979 as the International Year of the Child, in which UNICEF plays a leading role. 1985 The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice detail the principles of a justice system that promotes the best interests of the child, including education and social services and proportional treatment for child detainees. 1989 The Convention on the Rights of the Child is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and widely acclaimed as a landmark achievement for human rights, recognizing the roles of children as social, economic, political, civil and cultural actors. The Convention guarantees and sets minimum standards for protecting the rights of children in all capacities. UNICEF, which helped draft the Convention, is named in the document as a source of expertise. 1990 The World Summit for Children is held in New York. The Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency outline strategies for preventing criminality and protecting young people at high social risk. 1991 Experts from UNICEF, Save the Children, Defence for Children International and other organizations meet to discuss data gathered from the reporting process of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The meeting leads to the formal establishment of the Child Rights International Network (CRIN) in 1995. 1999 The International Labour Organization (ILO) adopts the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, calling for the immediate prohibition and elimination of any form of work that is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children. UNICEF has been working with the ILO since 1996 to promote the ratification of international labour standards and policies concerning child labour. 2000 The United Nations General Assembly adopts two Optional Protocols to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, obligating State Parties to take key actions to prevent children from partaking in hostilities during armed conflict and to end the sale, sexual exploitation and abuse of children. 2002 At the United Nations Special Session on Children, child delegates address the General Assembly for the first time. The World Fit for Children agenda was adopted outlining specific goals for improving the prospects of children over the next decade. 2006 UNICEF co-publishes the Manual for the Measurement of Juvenile Justice Indicators with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The Manual enables governments to assess the condition of their juvenile justice systems and make reforms as necessary. 2010 The United Nations Secretary-General issues the Status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 2011 A new Optional Protocol to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child is adopted. Under this Optional Protocol on a communications procedure, the Committee on the Rights of the Child can field complaints of child rights violations and undertake investigations. 2015 Somalia and South Sudan ratify the Convention. The Convention is the most widely ratified international instrument with 196 States. Only the United States has not ratified to date. More about the Convention on the Rights of the Child Convention on the Rights of the Child: A 7-year-old student and her best friend stand together in a school classroom in India. Campaign 30 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child Find out about the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history and take action for child rights UNICEF/UN0258573/Diarassouba Photo Essay Representing children: Then and now A treaty for children that explains their rights: The Convention on the Rights of the Child turns 30 Convention on the Rights of the Child: A group of children play in a school playground in Bangladesh. Page How the Convention on the Rights of the Child works Joining, implementing and monitoring the world’s most widely ratified human rights treaty Convention on the Rights of the Child: Three children run outside a mobile kindergarten in Mongolia. Page Child rights and human rights explained We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination Footer UNICEF Home What we do Research and reports Stories and features Where we work Press centre Take action About us Work for UNICEF Partner with UNICEF UNICEF Executive Board Evaluation Internal audit Transparency and accountability Sustainable Development Goals Related UNICEF sites UNICEF Connect UNICEF Data UNICEF Parenting Voices of Youth Global Shared Services Centre Support UNICEF Social Footer Secondary LegalContact us