Breastfeeding
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Breastfeeding is the feeding of an infant or young child with milk from a woman's breasts. Babies have a sucking reflex that enables them to suck and swallow milk.
History of breastfeeding
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans, like all other mammals, fed their young milk. Before the twentieth century, alternatives to breastfeeding were rare. Attempts in 15th century Europe to use cow or goat milk were not very positive. In the 18th century, flour or cereal mixed with broth were introduced as substitutes for breastfeeding, but this did not have a favorable outcome, either. True commercial infant formulas appeared on the market in the mid 19th Century but their use did not become widespread until after WWII. As the superior qualities of breast milk became better-established in medical literature, breastfeeding rates have increased and countries have enacted measures to protect the rights of infants and mothers to breastfeed.
See also
