 Ever since there have been boobs, there's been breastfeeding. From overdressed aristocrats using wet nurses to massive corporate campaigns, converting moms into baby formula fanatics, women have heard every unsolicited opinion in the book on how to use their own boobs. Hi, I'm Natalie, and this is the bizarre history of breastfeeding. This century's old debate didn't start with mommy blogs. You can go as far back as at least the Renaissance to see the mixed mammary messages that women have dealt with. At the time, wet nurses were all the rage, and anyone who could afford to have another woman breastfeed their child did, especially aristocrats. I mean, Renaissance ladies were busy. They were practically the Renaissance men of women. Between running the household staff, maintaining their figure, and pretending to laugh at their husband's jokes at high society functions, there really wasn't much time for feeding junior. You try changing in and out of a rough collar, corset, and floor-length velvet gown every time young Godfrey gets hungry. It's kind of hard to breastfeed your child every two hours if it takes you 45 minutes to get your whole outfit on and off. And yet popular artwork at the time made breastfeeding seem like an act akin to godliness. Renaissance art depicted the most holy and important woman in all of Christianity, the Virgin Mary, breastfeeding her own child. As for women who didn't breastfeed their own children, let's just say you won't find many paintings of Mary and her wet nurse in the Vatican. As printed works became more common in the early 1600s, we started to see evidence of a strong belief that, actually, mom should breastfeed her own child. A scholar of the time said if they don't, infants will learn to love wet nurses over their own mothers. No pressure, mom. I'd be pissed if my baby loved the wet nurse over myself. And listen, even though the Renaissance was a time of great progress, lots of people were still low-key kind of dumb. Alchemists were still trying to magically turn objects into gold, and it was considered a legitimate science at the time. And when it came to breastfeeding, there was the French surgeon who warned women against using red-headed wet nurses, for fear their fiery tempers might spoil the milk. Listen, Jacques, just because a woman is a ginger doesn't mean her breast milk is going to taste like hot Cheetos. Enter the age of baby formula. The Industrial Revolution came along in the early 1800s, and lots of working-class people started moving to cities. Moms had to help support the family and work outside the home, so they weren't with their babies for hours out of the day. And since they weren't aristocrats, they couldn't afford wet nurses and had to rely on homemade artificial milk to give their infants nutrition. By 1866, there was a huge turning point in how the world fed babies. The first milk formula finally hit the shelves, which gave moms even more options. Milk advancements kept improving those formulas, which gradually increased their popularity. Then corporations got involved. It's not personal. It's strictly business. By the early 1900s, big companies were using aggressive advertising worldwide to convince parents and healthcare professionals that formula was just as good as breastfeeding. Pet milk is a safe milk for babies. And it worked. Wow, what a shocker, corporations influencing major moments in history, that's never happened before. From 1929 to 1959, the number of U.S. moms who breastfed babies dropped by about half. Baby formula was clearly flying off the shelves. For decades, breastfeeding continued to drop in the U.S. And by the early 1970s, just 25% of infants were breastfed at birth. So case closed, right? The long, painful nights of pumping nutritionally inadequate breast milk are over. Formula is the future. Yes. But exactly the opposite of that in every way. As the 1970s wore on, major scientific research revealed the advantages of breastfeeding. Wait, what? That's right, breastfeeding is back, baby. I'll be back. Just like women were encouraged to embrace formula decades earlier, they were now led to believe that breastfeeding was the only way. How do you know what to believe? Whenever someone tells me to do something I like to do the exact opposite, probably not the best choice when it comes to feeding an infant. And the pro breastfeeding campaign was effective. So much so that over 83% of U.S. infants are now breastfed at some point. The solar eclipse is like a woman breastfeeding in a restaurant. It's free, it's beautiful, but under no circumstances should you look at it. The point of all this is that for centuries, women have been subjected to mixed messages and unrealistic expectations when it comes to breastfeeding. Don't use a wet nurse, but also accomplish these 500 tasks that basically make breastfeeding impossible. Use formula if you want your baby to grow up to be big and strong. But also if you use formula, your kid's gonna be a meth dealer. Yeah, Mr. White. Yes, science. The one thing that hasn't changed throughout this bizarre history is the amount of opinions women are bombarded with. There are some things we now know for sure. Breast is usually best. But it's not for everyone. Nearly 70% of U.S. moms are on the workforce. Some can't produce milk, and others just don't want to. And sadly, breastfeeding is still really stigmatized. One study even found moms who breastfeed are viewed as less competent than other women. Women should have the right to determine what's best for them and their baby and not be shamed by renaissance surgeons or mark from accounting who thinks a little nipple is inappropriate for the work environment. Hey guys, thank you so much for watching this video. I had a lot of fun making it and would love to make more. So if you have any ideas for topics, just comment below. And if you'd like to see more, subscribe to attention on YouTube. Thank you.