Fourth, many physicians believe that breast feeding gives to children not only better health, but also greater bodily endurance and nervous equilibrium. There are people, as is well known, who are never ill, resist infectious disease, and completely ignore physicians, surgeons, and hospitals.
Generally these people, when infants, were fed on human milk. Such a high degree of health depends on peculiar qualities of the tissues and the blood. And these qualities of the tissues and the blood. And these qualities come not only from hereditary tendencies, but also from the food and care given to the child during the formative period.
V.
How does nursing affect mothers? Lactation and suckling are natural functions. If performed with appropriate care, their effects ought to be beneficial. We know that breast feeding contributes to achieving the physical and mental development of women.
The breast suffers no ill effect from lactating activity. After weaning, the gland decreases in size and regains its normal shape. But proper attention, in particular adequate support, should be given to it before and during lactation. Sagging breasts are the result of insufficient care and defective nutrition not of the actual suckling of the young. If trained by wise physicians, women keep their beauty even after having suckled several babies.
Inflammation of the nipple and abscesses of the breast can easily be prevented by medical supervision. Suckling has never been shown to predispose the glands to cancer.
When mothers have proper food, rest, and exercise, their health is distinctly improved by nursing their baby. After childbirth, the contractions of the womb brought about by suckling prevent the occurrence of haemorrhage. Also they help the organ to return to its normal condition. As menstruation ceases, breast activity gives a period of rest to the ovaries. Proper diet during lactation is most important.
Physicians should devote more time to searching for a proper diet for nursing women than for artificial milk formulas. While feeding their babies, mothers learn a great deal about how to live. Also about the ill effects of tobacco, alcohol, and coffee, which enter the blood and directly affect the child. They have to lose many bad habits. They cannot afford to be nervous or temperamental. An intelligent woman derives great profit from suckling in connection with her present and future health.
Breast feeding, as is well known, is a hard and monotonous task. For a few months, the mother becomes the slave of the child, who has to be fed at three or four-hour intervals. At the same time, she must attend to her household duties. She needs strict self- discipline.
She has less time for outside work, social obligations, travelling, recreation. In exchange, she is given the priceless opportunity of learning selflessness and love. She also has the joy of giving more health, strength, and beauty to her baby. That is, the capacity for a happy life. Although love is not self-seeking, she prepares her own happiness in this manner. For most of the sorrows of parents come from, the physical and mental defects of their offspring.
VI.
Why are so many children compelled to feed from a bottle instead of the breast of their mother ? It is said that seven out of ten babies in maternity hospitals are weaned within two weeks. Should physicians or mothers be incriminated for this state of affairs ? While obstetricians advise breast suckling, knowing how important it is to the mothers convalescence, pediatricians catering to the well-to-do do not favour it so much as they should. Women have an exaggerated predilection for bottle feeding. Especially when they are well-to-to. For what reason is breast feeding so often discontinued ?.
According to Dr. Henry Dietrich of Los Angeles, fifty different reasons were considered as valid excuses in 370 cases for depriving children of their mothers milk. Some of the reasons were insufficient or defective milk-failure of the baby to gain weight, weakness of the mother, cracked nipples, and “social duties”. As a matter of fact, these excuses are not valid. Ninety per cent of mothers are able to nurse their babies. Only pregnancy, tuberculosis, cancer, and a few other diseases absolutely prevent breast feeding.
The true reasons for giving up breast feeding are both physiological and moral. Modern women are not prepared by their education and habits of life for maternity and its consequences. They are not taught the functional significance of the breast.
They are allowed to contract absurd dietary habits. Thus, during pregnancy and lactation, they do not absorb the food indispensable for abundant milk production. No scientific care is taken of nipples and breast, which should have gentle applications of lanolin from time to time all during pregnancy. Mothers do not realize that breast feeding is, like child-bearing itself, an essential organic function. They are ready to be humoured by over-zealous pediatricians into bottle feeding.
Many mothers believe their work, their career, their social pleasures are more important than the care of their children. They do not understand that their primary duty is motherhood.
Some years ago, a young mother pitied herself in Parents Magazine because doctors did not consider the price of breast milk ” in terms of her own time and energy !” No one has ever lamented about the infinite amount of time and energy spent in producing a masterpiece in art, science, engineering, or any other activity. No mother should complain of her hardships. Is not a heal thy child the supreme masterpiece ?.
Actually, modern women are the victims of economic and mental environment. Society has grown without regard for biological laws. Especially for the law of race propagation. Girls are given no sense of the purpose and significance of their life. They are educated like boys. They are given no different status in the community. They have to support themselves as men do.
How can factory and office workers, schoolteachers, lawyers, physicians, business women, pleasure-seeking society women, suckle babies even for three or four months, which is the minimum period desirable ? Besides, hygiene has put a heavy burden on the shoulders of mothers. Minute attention is imperative for the optimum development of children. Today, more than at any other period in the history of civilization, there is urgent need for a youth strong in body and mind.
Should babies be breast-fed, or bottle-fed ? Under its deceptive simplicity, this question profound significance. It requires an answer from mothers and physicians. Also from each man and woman in the nation. Ultimately, from democratic society itself. In nursing her child, the mother fulfils her high duty with regard to the community. But the community must give her the educational, moral, and material help indispensable to the fulfilment of this duty.
