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  • Back to the Breast: Natural Motherhood and Breastfeeding in Americaby Jessica Martucci
  • Rima D. Apple (bio)
Back to the Breast: Natural Motherhood and Breastfeeding in America. by Jessica Martucci. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Pp. 256. $35.

For most of human history, infants were fed at their mother's breast or the breast of another woman. This changed in the second half of the nineteenth century with availability of physician-designed and commercially produced infant foods. By the mid-twentieth century, the majority of United States infants were bottle-fed, one element of "scientific motherhood," in which women increasingly turned to medical practitioners for direction in infant care. Jessica Martucci's Back to the Breastaddresses the return to maternal nursing in the second half of the twentieth century, which she couples with "natural motherhood," an ideology "built on the sciences of instinct, evolution, psychology, and animal and human behavior" (p. 226). Her book discloses the power and limitations of scientific pronouncements and the changing image and role of women in United States society.

Martucci's careful study of the last two-thirds of the previous century confirms that bottle-feeding was not universal, though medical consensus viewed artificial food as being as good as, if not superior to, mother's milk. At the same time, social and behavioral scientists such as Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, John Bowlby, Margaret Mead, and Niles Newton stressed the importance of psychological and emotional influences of breastfeeding and the popular press often discussed their work. Also, there were individual physicians who promoted breastfeeding. Unfortunately, despite their advocacy, their patients often found themselves unable to nurse their infants. Breastfeeding is not merely physiology. The success of any given woman's ability to nurse is dependent on individual and systematic factors. For example, the authoritative and patriarchal structure of the medical system, particularly hospitalized childbirth with its institutional routines, inhibited a new mother's ability to breastfeed.

The central actors in this narrative are the mothers, and Martucci studies the personal lives of mothers and how some resisted the cultural imperative to bottle-feed. Her astute reading of popular literature and archival sources reveals the tension some women felt between the social expectation [End Page 595]of bottle-feeding and their guilt over not breastfeeding. Reflecting the tenets of "natural motherhood," mid-century proponents of breastfeeding and many new mothers believed that nursing benefited both child and mother; still, bottle-feeding remained predominant. With the rise of the environmental movement, some advocates related breastfeeding to a back-to-nature sentiment, linking that with "natural motherhood."

Martucci also explores feminists' contradictory responses to breast-feeding. For some, nursing affirmed the power of women while rejecting the sexualizing of women's bodies. For others, it strengthened the traditional gender roles that defined women's place in the domestic sphere. Breastfeeding and its relationship to "natural motherhood" was further complicated in the late twentieth century by technology and increased medicalization. Could "natural motherhood" include the use of a breast pump and the bottle-feeding of mother's milk? Could it incorporate medically trained professional lactation consultants? Martucci is especially perceptive in these sections of the book which highlight the complicated interconnections of technology, consumerism, and professionalization and how these developments revised the sense of "natural motherhood."

The epilogue brings the debate into the twenty-first century. It is in this chapter that Martucci most clearly articulates her thesis, namely, that a thoughtful study of breastfeeding and "natural motherhood" enables us to appreciate how our nation views motherhood and women. Martucci neither lionizes breastfeeding nor denigrates bottle-feeding. She shows how maternal nursing has become medicalized and explains that we must understand the context—the structural and ideological constraints—within which women make the decision.

Back to the Breastis a fascinating, skillful weaving of the histories of technology and medicine, women's lived experiences, and feminist analysis. The resurgence of breastfeeding in the last half of the twentieth century began as a woman-centric resistance to medical demands for bottle-feeding, a call for "natural motherhood." As growing numbers of women turned to maternal nursing, the social and cultural context changed with the entrance of...

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