Population and Nutrition: An Essay on European Demographic History by Massimo Livi-Bacci

Author:Massimo Livi-Bacci [Livi-Bacci, Massimo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, Europe, Population, Nutrition
ISBN: 9780521368711
Google: zGU4AAAAIAAJ
Amazon: 0521368715
Publisher: CUP Archive
Published: 1991-01-30T23:00:00+00:00

The starving and the well-fed

But independent of the earlier or later start of breast-feeding, its duration, and therefore the age at weaning, play a primary role in infant survival, as so many studies both historical and contemporary have demonstrated beyond any doubt. Babies who have not been breast-fed possess a defective immunological system and are prone to catch gastro-intestinal and viral respiratory infections. They run a far greater risk of death than breast-fed infants, a fact amply demonstrated by the tragic fate of babies in orphanages and by the very high mortality in those rare areas where breast-feeding was discredited. The protective effect of breast-feeding lasts, by and large, for the whole of the first year and thereafter decreases due to diminished flow. The age of weaning is thus an important variable in infant survival. If weaning occurs too early the infant is liable to catch infections, a risk which increases (whatever the weaning age may have been) at the point when the infant starts to take food that is handled and therefore easily contaminated.159

Eighteenth-century treatises are all in favour of maternal breastfeeding, and not a few authors associate an improvement in infant mortality at the end of that century with both the immediate start of breast-feeding and also its prolongation, particularly in areas where early weaning had prevailed.160 Unfortunately there are no quantitative data on the duration of breast-feeding and on ages at weaning. Thus any conclusions drawn about their influence on infant mortality must be largely inductive. Nonetheless it is probable that changes in custom relevant to first year mortality were mainly those occurring in the first six months of life: in the traditional mortality regime a good half of infant deaths occurred in the first month of life, and between seventy and ninety percent in the first six months.161 Since patterns of breast-feeding, apart from the moment of its inception, could not have varied that much during the first few months of life, we must look for other factors to explain variations in mortality.

These often crucially important factors have to do with environmental circumstances, climate, method of upbringing and greater or lesser vigilance in caring for the child. There is a great deal of evidence that these factors were predominant in determining the levels of infant mortality (with the exception of those groups and areas where breast-feeding was looked upon with disfavour). It would not otherwise be possible to explain the enormous infant mortality differences between winter and summer births, recorded in some areas but not in others with identical climatic patterns.162 How the child was protected from the cold was tremendously important. In some areas this was done efficiently, in others very poorly. High infant mortality in some areas can be explained by the employment of mothers outside the home and so by more relaxed supervision of the child.163 Finally, the wide divergence in infant mortality in urban areas between different social strata was attributable above all to environmental factors, such as the density of living conditions and the easier transmission of infections.

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