5 Understandable Reasons Our Mothers And Grandmothers Were Told To Use Baby Formula

Baby formula in the United States has a long and very complicated history. Between raging commercial incentives to get women off the boob and into the grocery store lines, formula companies have been giving new mothers a line of bull since the dawn of the 20th century. But while we may like to chuckle at what mythologies our World War II grandmothers and 1960s mothers were told about how to care for babies, some of these seemingly archaic reasons still linger today — in not just company advertisements, but also the preference of some contemporary mothers.

Cheap and easy has a tendency to not make for the best intersection of parental decision-making. And yet for an entire chunk of history, those two words allured legions of housewives and working mothers.

[ITPGallery]

(photo: Everett Collection/ Shutterstock)