[miss marmelstein]

Oh, kids were breastfed as toddlers in the 19th, early 20th century. Read some fiction like a “Tree Grows in Brooklyn” which has a classic chapter on a little brat who refuses to be weaned.

A lot of the breastfeeding had to do with not becoming pregnant.

And I’ll never forget Zelda Fitzgerald’s remark that she was breastfed until “she could chew sticks.” That would have been around 1905.

I hate this photo. It is in very bad taste and will cause that dumb kid a life of heartache.

[22cal]

Absolutely agree with every point, MM. Yes, toddlers were nursed, and they retired to another room and/or used a covering (did not show the breast). When one nurses toddlers it is not relevant what gender they happen to be.

There is a family story about my great-grand-father who lived in Eastern Tennessee. One day strangers visited the house (a very unusual circumstance). He was 4 or 5 years old at the time. He grabbed his mother's skirts and pulled her behind a door and said, "Hey Ma, give me a swig or two." This was for reassurance.

He was not stifled or weird and became a school-master. He finished raising four children alone after his wife died in the horrible flu pandemic of 1918.

[Finny]

Good post -- I hadn't thought of the advantages of breasteeding in order to avoid pregnancy! I just re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn last year, A very moving and informative book. Even there, though, it boils down to the parent lacking the moxie to exercise proper discipline of the kid. And somehow, I doubt very much that toddler breastfeeding was common or accepted in public places. Certainly in the days and circles of Jane Austen, in the early 1800s, public breastfeeding would have been vulgar beyond words. And again, in the Pioneer West, where women were busy with crucial chores from morning 'til night, I imagine it was a slovenly mother who would tolerate it, and an exhibitionist who would breastfeed toddlers in public, when standards of modesty were much more strict than today.

Discreet public breastfeeding of a babe in arms is one thing. Allowing a 3-year-old to bully a woman into exposing herself in public was probably as indicative of bad priorities then as it is now.

[SoKatt]

I own “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn”. It’s one of my all-time favorite books- and it was the first thing that I thought of when I saw the Time cover: a child nursing standing up, “with his legs crossed jauntily, looking like he was smoking a pale cigar”. Lol! Good call, mm!