11/11/2025
How Chest/Breastfeeding Was Pathologized by Colonialism — and Then Declared “Best”another short lesson on the impacts of coloniolism on infant and child feeding
Colonialism deeply reshaped how infants and children were fed across the world. Colonialism didn’t just alter what families fed their infants — it redefined what good feeding looked like through a racialized, class-based lens.
Colonial authorities and missionaries often discouraged breastfeeding, promoting “modern” infant feeding through formula, bottles, and rigid schedules. These were marketed as symbols of progress and whiteness — distancing communities from ancestral knowledge and intergenerational care networks.
This created deep internal hierarchies within communities. Feeding became a visible marker of class and racial assimilation — a way to perform proximity to whiteness and colonial respectability. Many families, especially in urban or upwardly mobile racialized groups, abandoned traditional feeding not out of choice but out of social survival.
Meanwhile, those who continued to breast/chestfeed were portrayed as “backward,” “poor,” or “ignorant.” In many colonized nations, rural and Indigenous communities were mocked for “refusing modernity,” while the use of formula became a visible performance of compliance with colonial ideals.
Formula required safe water, sterile bottles, and consistent access to costly supplies — all of which were scarce under colonial rule. Many caregivers diluted formula to make it last longer or used contaminated water sources, leading to severe malnutrition, dehydration, and gastrointestinal infections.
Formula required safe water, sterile bottles, and consistent access to costly supplies — all of which were scarce under colonial rule. Many caregivers diluted formula to make it last longer or used contaminated water sources, leading to severe malnutrition, dehydration, and gastrointestinal infections.
Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, infant mortality rates rose sharply as a direct result of colonial feeding campaigns. Babies became sick and died not because of a lack of love or care — but because the systems that imposed “modern feeding” ignored the material realities of colonized life.
Decades later, public health systems — largely shaped by the same colonial frameworks — reversed course, declaring breastfeeding as “best.” But even this shift often carries moral overtones, overlooking the social, economic, and systemic barriers created by colonization itself.
RDs for Neurodiversity
