It’s a turn of phrase many new parents are familiar with: “Breast is best.”
In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends parents breastfeed their babies for at least the first year of life, and the World Health Organization even advises against the use of bottles, artificial teats and pacifiers. Yet 74 percent of American infants receive at least some formula by the six-month mark, according to the CDC’s 2020 Breastfeeding Report Card. Now, amid a nationwide formula shortage in the U.S., those parents who do opt for a baby bottle — for reasons ranging from health problems to the demands of working outside the home — face intensified scrutiny.
“We know, going back thousands of years, that there have been alternatives to breastfeeding,” says Andrea Waters-Rist, an associate professor and bioarchaeologist at Western University in Canada. Though these substitutes were never the norm, “there's no singular pattern in the past that anyone can say would have been the 'natural' or the 'right' way to breastfeed and wean,” she adds.
