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3 H istorical records of early breastfeeding practices in Canada are relatively scarce. However, through the use of infant mortality data, it is possible to explore, albeit indirectly, infant feeding practices in colonial and industrializing Canada. While it appears that, for Aboriginal groups and new settlers, exclusive breastfeeding for many months was typical, variations in breastfeeding practices appear in the earliest available records. In particular, data from late-nineteenth-century Montreal demonstrates how breastfeeding practices were related to class, environment, religion, language , and fertility patterns. At the end of the nineteenth century, several movements were contributing to the development of new ideas, beliefs, and values about breastfeeding. Concerns about child welfare and public health led to a range of activities on the part of charities, religious organizations, and municipal governments to address problems resulting from urbanization , mass immigration, and industrialization. The emergence of a strong social reform movement reduced the distance between “public issues” and “private troubles” and led to breastfeeding’s shift from private matter to public concern. Beginnings: Breastfeeding in Colonial Canada Before the arrival of European settlers in eastern Canada, Aboriginal women often breastfed their infants for two to three years, sometimes even longer (Prentice et al. 1988, 7; Dodgson and Struthers 2003; Siegel 1984).1 In the 1600s, immigrants from France, and in the 1700s, immigrants from England, brought their own cultures of breastfeeding with them. Overall, long periods of breastfeeding were widely practised in colonial Canada (Sorg and Craig 1983; Nault, Desjardins, and Legare 1990; Siegel 1984; Henripin 1954). Without adequate alternatives for breast milk, infants who were not breastfed rarely survived. One estimate indicates that, on average, at the beginning of the eighteenthcentury,infantsinNewFrancewerebreastfedforfourteenmonths Chapter 1 Infant Mortality, Social Reform, and Milk, 1850–1910 4 Chapter 1 (Henripin 1954). However, different immigrant groups often had different breastfeeding practices. Women in agricultural communities in Quebec are thought to have weaned their infants earlier, a practice they brought with them from France (Light and Parr 1983). Also, rates of breastfeeding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are known to have been lower in the cities of Quebec and Montreal than they were in outlying rural areas (Nault, Desjardins, and Legare 1990). With regard to wet-nursing (the practice of a woman breastfeeding another woman’s infant, often for payment) in Canada, there is very little information available. In seventeenth-century Europe, wet-nursing was most common among the upper classes. Upper-class women often paid wet nurses to care for infants in their homes. Later, wet-nursing became more common across all classes, and women sent their infants to wet nurses in rural areas. Wetnursing in Europe began to wane in the eighteenth century. France, however , was one of the few countries in which wet-nursing continued to grow (Sussman 1982). Outside of Canada, in the Protestant colonies established by England and the Netherlands, it appears that most infants were breastfed by their mothers and that wet nurses were only used in emergencies. In the Roman Catholic colonies established by Spain, Portugal, and France, it seems that it was relatively common to employ wet nurses, who were often of “lower” social status (e.g., black and Aboriginal women). Also, colonists from Roman Catholic countries were inclined to establish charitable organizations , such as foundling hospitals, to care for orphaned children. In these institutions, wet nurses were hired to care for infants (Fildes 1988). Wet-nursing appears to have occurred in colonial Canada to some extent; however, there are no data on how many infants were wet-nursed, how long they were nursed, who the wet nurses might have been, or whether or not wetnursing was formally organized. It seems that the practice first emerged in New France in the 1700s, with the development of a nobility and a bourgeoisie. This paralleled the growth of wet-nursing in France (Nault, Desjardins, and Legare 1990; Desjardins 1997). Data from parish registers in New France between 1621 and 1730 indicate that more infants died in the first year of life in wealthy families than in less privileged families. This surprising finding is possibly explained by the higher frequency of births in wealthier families. Because breastfeeding suppresses ovulation and has an effect on the length of time between births, the intervals between birth suggest that wet-nursing was often practised among wealthier families in the cities of Quebec and Montreal (Lalou 1997). One eighteenth-century Montreal merchant, Pierre Guy, hired a wet nurse for each of his children. Madame Guy gave...

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