Historian Explains What Really Happened to Babies Before the Advent of Modern Infant Formula

There are a lot of arguments about what to feed your children when they first come into the world. The arguments are so pervasive that there are slogans to go along with each side. “Breast is best” or “Fed is best.” Personally, I blame mom-shaming. It’s pretty audacious to try to tell a mother what she should be feeding her child.

In addition to the shaming, there’s also a lack of historical context and understanding that may cause people to be so dogmatic about feeding preferences. One woman shared some of this historical insight on X, formerly Twitter. 

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Carla Cevasco said the idea that everyone breastfed successfully is a lie.

Author Carla Cevasco, PhD, shared that people often argue that before the rise of modern, commercial infant formula all babies drank breast milk and “everything was great.” She shared that as a historian that is simply not true. In a Twitter thread, Cevasco began to list the reasons people may have needed to use food other than breast milk.

“Sometimes the birthing parent was unable to breastfeed,” she wrote. “Because: death in childbirth, or physical/mental health concerns, or need to return to work outside the home right after childbirth.”

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Cevasco wrote about enslaved women.

Then Cevasco introduced another reality, people don’t often consider: The plight of women who didn’t get to choose how they fed their children at all. “OR their partner or enslaver forced them not to breastfeed so that they could return to fertility ASAP after giving birth.”

Sometimes, Cevasco wrote, it wasn’t about the adults. “Sometimes baby was unable to breastfeed. Because: poor latch, prematurity, cleft palate, other health or disability reasons, etc.” And there were also infants who were adopted.

Some children starved while their mothers were feeding others.

Then Cevasco explained what people did without breast milk and without the formula we know today. “Sometimes someone else would breastfed the child,” she wrote. “This might have been a relative or neighbor doing it for free. Or it might have been a paid or unpaid servant or enslaved person doing it at the expense of their own nursing infant, who might starve to death as a result.”

There were breast milk alternatives.

Other times people had to get more creative. “Sometimes babies thrived on alternative diets,” she said. “Wabanaki women in the 18th century sometimes fed infants a mixture of boiled walnuts, cornmeal, and water; an English colonist, Elizabeth Hanson, reported that her baby thrived on this diet … In early modern Europe, babies often ate pap or panada, mixtures of animal milk or water, bread crumbs or flour. Sometimes these were boiled, sometimes they weren’t.”

As you might imagine, some of these substitutes weren’t always safe or nutritionally sufficient. That’s when Cevasco explained the harsh reality of the situation. “So before the advent of modern commercial formula (in the 1950s), a lot of babies died of illness or starvation because they couldn’t breastfeed and the alternative foods were not safe or adequate.”

'It's great to have options,' Cevasco wrote.

Cevasco concluded this educational moment with a simple argument. “Let’s be grateful that there are multiple safe, nutritionally complete ways to feed babies. Breastmilk is one option. Formula is another option. It’s great to have options.” Lastly, as a historian, Cevasco cited her sources.

As morbid and depressing as this history lesson is, it’s one we need to remember when we try to dictate or shame a mother for the choices she’s made in feeding her children.