Correct me if I am wrong, but most breastfeeding moms lift up their shirts to nurse rather than pulling their breast up over their shirt, right? When I have been among friends or family, or out in public I have almost always breastfed from under my shirt, unconsciously assuming that it is more socially acceptable to show some tummy as opposed to some breast. Yet at home it feels more natural to go the fastest route, which for me is up through my scoop neck shirts. It’s warmer too. When I lift up my shirt, my sides get exposed to the cool air. At home I want to cover them up to stay warm, and in public I want to cover them up because I feel more self-conscious of my post-baby flab and roly-polies than I do of breastfeeding. I know this is a weird subject to write about, and up to the point of typing this out I had not given this topic much thought either.
Then about a week ago I stumbled across the blog of Jennifer James. Her hobby is to find and post historical photos of breastfeeding women. And you know what? All of the women in the photos are nursing their babies from above their shirts! None of them are trying to hide their extra breast flesh, even in front of men (with the exception of certain later year photos)! Granted, most of them are wearing button-up shirts, so fashion must have played a role, but even so – when I wear a button-up blouse I still nurse from underneath it or out from the middle buttons. My understanding of historical breastfeeding, up until now, was that women went off into private rooms to nurse, and that they never did it in front of men! These pictures tell a different story, and make me realize just how much society’s definition of modesty has changed in the past seventy some odd years.
The picture I included with this post is a photo of me breastfeeding my firstborn when she was two. I was initially really embarrassed when I saw it because I was out in public when the picture was taken. And like I said earlier, I only usually breastfeed from above the shirt at home. But now that I have seen Jennifer James blog I am quite pleased I have this photo. Does this mean I will begin publicly breastfeeding in the way that is innately more comfortable for me? I have no idea. But I feel like I should because it goes along with the whole point of my blog, which is to make public breastfeeding more acceptable. I’ll give it a try and report back to you.
When did it suddenly become more proper to nurse from below our shirts? Did this arise around the time of the introduction of formula? Did women start to do this to be more discrete when suddenly it was no longer socially acceptable to breastfeed? Do you breastfeed this way? Would you?
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Tags: modesty
This is one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given. I blog about historical breastfeeding and try to drive the point home that something happened to our notion of modesty since the 1930s and 1940s. Like you, I thought breastfeeding moms would have been more apt to breastfeed out of the sight of men and strangers, but it was quite the opposite. There was no shame in breastfeeding at all!
This is a beautiful photo. It has always been my greatest wish that breastfeeding moms would see these photos and go back to our grandmothers’ breastfeeding ideals. And you made an observation that I didn’t even catch!
Kudos to you! And thank you SO much for reading my blog.
Melodie,
This is a beautiful picture. I hope this encourages women to be more comfortable in public. Both as a breast feeder and as those seeing breastfeeding where they did not before.
Kirsten
Hi and welcome to MBC!
It’s actually a fascinating topic if you ask me. I’d love to know more about the historical views on breastfeeding as I think we tend to project our morals and foibles onto past generations, only exagerated and more conservative. I think we fool ourselves into beleiving that we are very open and accepting these days. I personally would have rather been a breastfeeding mother 80 years ago than now. Just for breastfeeding though.
[...] the mannequin is breastfeeding from above her shirt? I think most of nurse from below (see my post “From Above As Below?”). Now there’s mama who isn’t afraid to show some [...]
Just found your blog and I LOVE IT!!! I’m a nurse and had a baby girl in June last year and we are a happy nursing couple! I’m hoping to become a lactation consultant and am currently beginning the process to become a LLL leader! I’ll be adding your site to my feed reader
To answer your Q, I generally breastfeed from under, although I often wear nursing tops, since I find them to be easier than anything else. I don’t wear a lot of low-cut or scoop-neck tops, so if I’m wearing a non-nursing shirt, it’s normally easier to nurse from below!
Huh, I never really thought about the socially accepted aspect. For me, it has always depended on what type of shirt I am wearing. In other words, from which end are my breasts more accessible? I think my daughter would ALWAYS prefer nursing from above. She has never – not once – lifted my shirt up to nurse. She always tries to yank my shirt down at the neckline, and I often have to rescue my clothes from her strong grip while I quickly make a breast accessible from below!
Stephanie’s last blog post..surviving a cold/flu with a nursling
[...] her chest. She is fondly looking down at her baby. I love that she is shamelessly feeding her baby from above her dress too, because in North America and Britain at least, that can be more skin than many women want to [...]
Fascinating! It really depends on the cut of the shirt I’m wearing, where I am, and how cold it is. I generally prefer nursing from below when I’m around others because my baby pops on and off a lot, and this way I can quickly cover myself (for my own comfort and probably theirs, too).
.-= Kacie´s last blog ..A visit from the Christmas Elf =-.
For the longest time after I started breastfeeding without a cover I would only go bottom up (with a tank top, but I’ve always worn tank tops under my shirts) even when it was more logical to go from the top. I recently decided that when it’s easier to go from the top, I’m doing it. Though even today when I was wearing a from-the-top shirt I felt awkward feeding Peanut in front of my dad. It’s weird that I’ll go from the bottom any time or place, but from the top I feel like I need to be on the defensive.
I almost always nurse from underneath, even when I’m at home alone with my baby. Every once in awhile I’ll nurse from above, mostly if my top buttons, but when I try it from above I usually end up stretching out my shirt, pulling it down to nurse, and since it really isn’t any more difficult for me to nurse from below, I’d rather not ruin my clothes.
.-= Jen´s last blog ..When She Flew – Book Review =-.
I always, and I mean ALWAYS nurse from above my shirt, unless I’m wearing something like a turtleneck which would make that impossible. I go out of my way to make sure I’m wearing/buying shirts that have easy access at the top. It’s so much easier and more comfortable for me.
.-= TheFeministBreeder´s last blog ..2009 Year in Review =-.
Very interesting post. I have never given this any thought. I tend to mostly wear T-shirts so nursing from above isn’t possible. But even if I was wearing something that could go either way, I think I’d go from below because it’s easier to “put it away” discreetly when the baby is done or is taking a break. I don’t mind showing a little breast, but I go out of my way to make sure my nipple is never exposed when NIP and that seems easier to do from below.
.-= Recovering Procrastinator´s last blog ..Gifts for infants: Beyond bibs and booties =-.
So, I had a think about this for a while, because the idea of nursing from the bottom had NEVER occurred to me till i saw it a couple of years ago, and when I did see it, it HORRIFIED ME! I wanted to spend some time figuring out why I felt this way. Please don’t take this as an insult to those moms who do it that way, because this is obviously a cultural thing, but it looked so unattractive and sloppy to me. It flashed the entire torso and the shirt was wrapped around the woman’s neck like a noose. It also made her breasts look like they were at her waist. It may have been because everyone I’ve seen using this method hunches down when they do it, but it doesn’t look feminine to me at all, in fact, it looks like the way a man would nurse if he had to. somehow, it just looked WRONG. So, why such a strong reaction I wondered to myself? Because, lets face it, it’s rare to think this way, as I’ve discovered.
Now, keep in mind, I have a RARE cultural perspective, because I come from an unbroken line of breastfeeders. No, really, not one woman in my line has been a bottlefeeder. My Nana was a proud rural woman and she breastfed her children starting in 1947 when my mother was born. My Nana’s father was Dutch, and raised her to be proud of rural people’s self-sufficiency and because she was raised in an isolated northern area, without the influence of North American shame. In my family, Motherhood and all the positive aspects are considered to be equivalent to breastfeeding. My Nana thought the rich ladies from the city with their bottles and their “scientific parenting” were crazy! She also refused to copy their fancy gardening chemicals, preferring to stick to her manure heap out back of the barn. In general, my Nana thought “newfangled” ways were unproven and she’d stick to what worked, thank you very much. Even I grew up hearing about the cabin she was raised in and how, they didn’t have money, but they “made do” and always ate well. So, even though my mom and siblings were well educated, they also had a healthy scepticism of unnecessary “advancements” instilled in them. My Mother breastfed my sister and I, she was friends with other breastfeeding women in the 70s when I was growing up, my Aunts all breastfed. I had never seen a bottlefed baby, anywhere except for sale as a dolly, until my stepmother had my sister when I was a teenager!
Women who wouldn’t even try breastfeeding were considered by my family to have something very wrong with them. After all, why would anyone HAVE a baby if they weren’t going to look after it? Yes, this is a very different perspective from most people, I realise this now, but it really IS how I was raised! I GET that I am different. I understand the social pressures that women are under to use formula. I understand the fact that most women have never even seen breastfeeding at all, never mind seen it as the norm, but my family does NOT understand that. Breastfeeding was assumed as the norm. And EVERY woman that I had ever seen breastfeed, fed from above. No variation, NONE. Shirts unbuttoned and breasts were exposed, no big deal. The clothes that women wore, were all easily used to nurse. I had never seen a woman wear a t-shirt. T-shirts were what men wore when they were mucking out the barn in the summer, not part of an attractive woman’s garb. My mother was a nurse and wore starched white dresses, collars and caps at work. When not working, she sometimes wore pants, but always with a blouse. Normally, she wore a dress if we were going out. Even when we were back home at Nana’s, our women wore men’s work pants and flannel shirts that buttoned down the front while the whole family helped bring in the apples or the hay or cut firewood. So, to lift up clothing for these women, would most often mean lifting a skirt! Why lift a shirt that you can unbutton and WHY lift a dress! And since full length bras were popular, even lifting a blouse would mean exposing undergarments, never mind a stomach! they’d be mortified! It had never occurred to me to do anything but unbutton a shirt to breastfeed anymore than it would occur to any of us to pull down a shirt to put on socks! boobs are up here, not down there!
So, my internal picture of a breastfeeding mother, is a woman sitting in a kitchen chair or rocker, in the same room as everyone else, straight-backed, shoulders square, head held high, PROUD, quietly nursing her child with a few buttons undone. No-one would notice or comment, except to coo at the baby. Cleavage and shoulders would be visible and considered part of the beauty of that picture of Motherly grace. Most often that Mom would be excused from any of the kitchen chores, she would be the only one not preparing food or washing up because she would be nursing the baby. If anything, she would be in the place of pride, quietly receiving the smiles and adoration of our extended family, part of the inseparable dyad which included our newest beloved arrival. Connected to an unbroken chain of Mothers and Grandmothers before her, part of history, PROUD.
Contrast this with a woman hiding away, her t-shirt hiked up to her collar bone on one side, yanked down on the other to cover her cleavage, slouched over so no-one will question her activity, aware if only unconsciously that anyone who sees her may very well question her behaviour. Perhaps it makes more sense now why I would find this incongruous? I realised after thinking about it, that I was sad and angry for this Mom. SHE deserved to be sitting adored in my Nana’s kichen! SHE deserved to have a group of young cousins gazing in awe at the baby falling asleep at her breast. SHE deserved to be considered the most beautiful woman in the room with all the menfolk running around to make sure she had a footstool and a cup of tea or anything else she needed! Damnit, ALL women deserve to feel that way!
I feel so blessed, when I hear stories of disapproving fathers, to think of my own Dad, who told me he wished he was a painter, because he thought that watching me nurse my baby was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he wished he could capture that picture forever. I want EVERY mom to feel PROUD and BEAUTIFUL to open her blouse to offer her breast to her child, not ashamed, not shy. And I want every Mom to take it for granted that everyone who sees her will adore and bless her for being that beautiful proud Mother, with her baby openly at her breast.
I hope that all makes sense and gives a unique perspective. Maybe us poor country folk have something more valuable in our lives than “scientific advancement” that we can offer to those of you who are more “up-to-date”?