Protecting the Nature Within: Mothers, Breastfeeding, and Environmental Activism

In 1972, the international breastfeeding support organization, La Leche League, published a pamphlet titled “DDT and Mother’s Milk,” which addressed the problem of tainted breast milk. “Many mothers have wondered whether they should discontinue nursing their babies,” they wrote, adding “The answer is ‘No.’” As much as the League wished the issue of DDT and other toxins would dissipate, however, the impact of environmental contaminants in breast milk has long since persisted as a concern within scientific and popular discussions of breastfeeding. As early as 1951, scientists began recording traces of DDT stored in the fat of humans, while early animal studies suggested that dangerous chemicals might be concentrated in mother’s milk.  Through the 1960s, research highlighting the concentrations of DDT in human bodies continued to appear in leading medical journals, notably JAMA.

Drawing upon the papers of La Leche League and records of early environmental activism in groups such as The Society for a SANE Nuclear Policy and Women Strike For Peace, this paper discusses the late-20th century connections between the resurgence in breastfeeding amongst American mothers and the emergence of an environmental consciousness. I focus on how ideas about "the natural" within the female maternal body aligned with evolving ideas about nature in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Through an analysis of the debates over the contamination of mother’s milk in this context, I suggest how mid-20^th century ideas about motherhood marked the maternal body as a site upon which emerging concerns over environmental degradation were manifest.