Denied their ‘natural nourishment’: religion, causes of death and infant mortality in the Netherlands, 1875–1899

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century, infant mortality rates started to fall rapidly in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, not all regions benefited from this development. High infant death in the Roman Catholic provinces of North-Brabant and Limburg has often been ascribed to a growing reluctance of Catholic mothers to breastfeed their infants after 1870. This was supposedly caused by the combination of a strict, prudish Roman Catholic norm prohibiting women from baring their breasts and a refusal to accept new medical insights into healthy childcare. The food given to weaned children was generally of such poor quality that many infants succumbed to gastrointestinal diseases. Consequently, infant mortality rates caused by water- and food-borne infectious diseases would have been higher amongst weaned babies. By using recently digitised municipal cause-of-death registration statistics, it is possible to see if there are, indeed, indications of a shift in breastfeeding patterns after 1870. First, the authors look at infant deaths from all causes to see whether Roman Catholic municipalities underwent a rise in the mortality of children under the age of one. Second, the authors do the same for cause-specific infant mortality from typhus, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, acute diseases of the digestive system and cholera. Based on the outcomes, there was no homogenous rise in infant mortality in all Roman Catholic municipalities. Furthermore, there is no indication that infant mortality due to digestive diseases increased uniformly in all Roman Catholic communities between 1875 and 1899. Either some communities were able to counteract the negative effects of a shift towards weaning or changes in breastfeeding patterns were not a specific Roman Catholic phenomenon at all.

Keywords::

• infant mortality
• causes of death
• breastfeeding
• religion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. The research presented in this article is part of a PhD research project titled Region, religion and death: The cultural rigidity of mortality and cause of death patterns in the Netherlands, 1875–1899, by Nynke van den Boomen, Radboud University, Nijmegen.

^2. The infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of infant deaths per 1000 live births at a specific time and place.

^3. The term ‘Catholic’ refers explicitly to the Roman Catholic Church in this article, excluding all other Catholic denominations.

^4. Koninklijke Nederlandse Maatschappij tot bevordering der Geneeskunst (KNMG), a Dutch association of medical practitioners, founded in 1849.

^5. Two good examples of provincial-level studies are Van Poppel (1992) and Wolleswinkel-van den Bosch (1998). Examples of micro-level research on the Netherlands are Janssens and Pelzer (2014), Van Poppel et al. (2002) and Walhout (2010).

^7. The Wet regelende het Geneeskundig Toevoorzicht and the Wet op de Uitoefening der Geneeskunst, respectively.

^8. The Historische Databank Nederlandse Gemeentes or the Historical Database of Dutch Municipalities.

^9. See also the article by Ekamper and Van Poppel (2008).

^10. In the second period, a reported 723 infants died from debility and phthisis. Between 1885 and 1889, the number rose to a total of 2420 infant deaths. It increased slightly further to 2486 infant deaths between 1890 and 1894.