A woman breast feeding her child, 13th century

Paying Moms to Breastfeed in Medieval Europe

The idea of offering remuneration to women for breastfeeding—even their own children—wasn’t unusual in late medieval and early modern Europe.
Etching: A wet nurse breast feeding the Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.24839779

How Wet-Nursing Stoked Class Tensions

“[N]o man can justly doubt, that a childs mind is answerable to his nurses milk and manners.”
breastfeeding eighteenth century

When Breastfeeding Was a Civic Duty

Think people are judgmental of mothers now? In the 18th- and 19th-centuries, mothers who bottle-fed their babies were blamed for many of society's ills.
A mother holding her newborn in a birthing tub after her home water birth.

From Home Births to Maternity Wards and Back Again

Once hospital deliveries became mainstream, mothers have had to make a choice: a home birth or go to the hospital? 
A mother breastfeeding her child.

The Cultural Expectations of Breastfeeding

Society constructs women’s bodies as sexual, but mothers’ bodies as asexual—a quandary that presents a dilemma for women who nurse in public.