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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

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Original poster

Call The Midwife - on breast feeding

44 replies

ChocolateWombat · 18/01/2015 20:48

Did anyone see the 1st episode tonight?
I'm watching it now and it's like an NCT party political broadcast advocating breast feeding over bottles. Amazing that it is claiming to be historically accurate!
Funny isn't it, that we can't help imposing current values and trying to push an agenda, even in period dramas!

OP posts:

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 18/01/2015 20:51

Haven't seen it, but isn't the program set in London slums? I doubt most of the mothers picture d could afford formula ( did they even have formula back then?), or have the wherewithal to manage the hygiene correctly.

TheWhiteRoad · 18/01/2015 20:56

East End midwives in the 50s did recommended breast feeding. Jennifer Worth was clear on this in her memoirs. Formula was not only expensive but required a clean kitchen and sterile bottles to be safe. These couldn't be guaranteed in the deprived areas of the East End.

Mouldypineapple · 18/01/2015 21:01

Well I think it was great reinforcing the breast is best message but was well balanced with a formula discussion too.

SophieBarringtonWard · 18/01/2015 21:01

Breastfeeding was recommended in the 1950s I believe, certainly I have 3 parenting manuals from then (one 1948, one 1951, one 1954), they all are very clear that breast-feeding is the best thing to do.

Hulababy · 18/01/2015 21:14

I don't think it was modern values. I think in those types of locations at that time breast feeding was advised. Bottle feeding needs clean equipment and was expensive. Hence why the discussion about carnation came out.

littleducks · 18/01/2015 21:24

There is a duplicate thread for this, maybe MNHQ could combine?

squizita · 18/01/2015 22:11

Yep it's a modern myth (rather like when we started using spices and olive oil and pasta) that it wasn't done at all in the 50s. It certainly was in London.

FWIW it wasn't discouraged in many places (though was in some) in the 60s/70s either - just not pushed.

tiktok · 18/01/2015 23:01

Vast majority of mothers began breastfeeding in the 1950s.

Where did anyone get the idea that this was not the case?

Indantherene · 18/01/2015 23:11

Isn't this series set in the very early 60s?

I thought the clinic was very much promoting formula.

tiktok · 18/01/2015 23:25

Same thing early sixties. Fewer than in the fifties. But most women started breastfeeding. What often led to a poor experience was the maternity hospital insistence on scheduled feeds. I haven't seen call the midwife so I don't know how they portrayed it. But widespread starting off with formula did not happen in the uk until the late sixties and early seventies.

Original poster

ChocolateWombat · 19/01/2015 07:19

Mouldy, I guess my point was that a TV period drama isn't the place to be reinforcing a modern message!
If you want to have a drama which shows society as it was, you have to present the values and attitudes of the time, even if you don't like them now.

I just felt that some of language was very 'now' and anachronistic.

OP posts:

Pooka · 19/01/2015 07:26

My great aunt was a midwife in Glasgow East end in 1950s and southeast (inner) london in the 1960s.

She recommended breastfeeding, and most women breast fed, because they couldn't afford formula, and even if they could, in many cases and certainly in Glasgow (delivering a baby with the ceiling crawling with lice) there wasn't an abundant supply of clean water for formula preparation.

She later became a health visitor, and again would encourage breast feeding over formula feeding, and was, in her 80s, a real cheerleader for me when I had my first child and was overcome by the knackering early days of establishing feeding.

HappyAsASandboy · 19/01/2015 07:43

I guess my point was that a TV period drama isn't the place to be reinforcing a modern message!

The message that breast is preferable to formula is not a "modern message"! In fact, it has only become a message at all in recent decades, since formula became available.

The message that 'breast is best', or indeed that 'breast is the norm' is as old as the human race. There was a short period of time in the '60s and '70s where the modern message was to push formula as a great alternative. Formula is the modern message, not breast!

tiktok · 19/01/2015 07:43

Wombat, you are wrong about the 'modernity' of the message about breastfeeding/formula. From what I read on this thread, and the reviews of Call the Midwife, the script reflects the attitudes and language of the times.

Oodbrain · 19/01/2015 07:59

This confused me as I'm on the other thread
But people have already made the same points as I did anyway.

squizita · 19/01/2015 09:57

Happy though from what I understand from older relatives, in the 60s-70s London it wasn't so much being told breast was not best as being told it but with strict feed times on the ward... first sign of problems no one knew what to do "apart from one elderly nun" who visited once a week. So you were handed formula.
People knew, but there was no support.

Original poster

ChocolateWombat · 19/01/2015 16:49

I am happy to accept that breastfeeding was fairly widespread - I guess one of the issues, is it is not exactly clear when this series of Call the Midwife was set.

One of the things that made me laugh out loud, was the 12 year old Timothy talking about anti-bodies in breast milk that are lacking in formula. Really!! Would a 12 year old boy have been taught that in the 1950s/60s?
I guess it was that kind of thing that made it feel a bit like it was 'preaching' to us, rather than just telling a story.

OP posts:

snozzlemaid · 19/01/2015 16:55

Timothy said he'd read about it in The Lancet which I guess he would see because his father is a doctor.

Original poster

ChocolateWombat · 19/01/2015 18:04

Yes, but does that ring true? That's the whole point about period dramas - both the characters and story lines have to be plausible for the period they are set.

It can be hard for producers to get this be right and not be influenced by modern views. I understand they were trying to show the issues surrounding formula of the time,but to me it sounded like a modern discussion in terms of the language and tone, perhaps written by someone who is interested in the issue today.

It seems most other viewers who are commenting on here didn't get that same sense of it being not quite of the period it was set, so perhaps it is just me. I've had this same sense when watching other period dramas which address topics which we find distasteful today, and fail to really show the values of the time.....issues like slavery, racism and the position of women spring to mind. If a programme is trying to be historically accurate, it can present attitudes/behaviour we find distasteful today, without it suggesting that we think they are acceptable now. So dramas about the Victorian period will often have women questioning their lot in life and their limited opportunities compared to men - but that is a modern voice speaking. The vast vast majority of Victorian women would not have considered this as an issue to be challenged.
It's probably because I'm a Historian that I see it like this. I just thought they were so glaring that I started the thread. I'm happy to accept my view of it is a minority one.

OP posts:

squizita · 19/01/2015 18:31

The flipside though is what "everyone knows" about the past ... They loved bigger girls in the 50s (no), they didn't know what olive oil was pre Elizabeth David (no), discipline in all schools was better in the past (no), crime was lower in the past (no) and so forth.
Sometimes our current positions and viewpoints - especially of "modern" viewpoints and if we dare I say it collective awareness vua digital media opinion pieces - can make what is plausible seem implausible.
I've seen it quite often with literature contemporary to historical periods: people are surprised by opinions and ideas which seem too modern and don't fit into our own world view of the past.

Breastfeeding is currently seen as what clever young modern mums do. Mid century births are gelled into one blur of lie-on-your-back-hell. Never mind this spans the 20s-80s in people's minds, wartime with milk rationing etc. It's a folk demon to be fought against. You get told your mum won't know about breastfeeding when a good chunk do. Never mind the key decades for breastfeeding beibg neglected were the late 60s-70s, and even then it varied wildly.

Original poster

ChocolateWombat · 19/01/2015 18:38

Very good points squizita.

OP posts:

Hulababy · 19/01/2015 18:38

Well, he is portrayed as a clever little boy with an interest in his dad's work. The magazine will be easily accessible to him at home because of his dad so chances are, he will pick it up and read it. Especially as he has a baby in the house so things to do with babies will be of more interest to him at the moment.

I know of a few children with medical parents and they certainly are aware of medical things in a way their peers might not be - often because they hear things being discussed or read about them in a parents book or magazine laying around the home.

Pooka · 19/01/2015 18:40

I used to read my great uncle's lancets when I stayed at my grandmother's house. Or at least look at (be horrified by) the pictures! :)

Hulababy · 19/01/2015 18:41

It is true that breastfeeding started to decline in the 60s and 70s, and to an extent in the 50s. However, breastfeeding was still very much the norm for many working class, or poor, mothers.

tiktok · 19/01/2015 18:46

Agreed, squizita. Wombat, you are making assumptions. If you know this topic area - and it's one of my fave subjects :) - you will know there was quite a lot of rather patronising and patriarchal concern about mothers not bf, from the late 1940s onwards. Letters in the medical and nursing press berated the trend (at a time when most mothers certainly were bf). Mothers were exhorted to bf quite stridently (far far more directly than anything you see or hear today). At the same time the big move to hospital birth meant mothers had to feed on a schedule and babies were cared for away from their mothers' bedsides. Result: widespread breastfeeding 'failure'.

I have no idea how realistic it would be for young Tim to read his dad's lancet but antibodies and breastmilk were understood at the time.

Any glance at booklets and leaflets from the time will show you the emphasis on bf (I have a collection).

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