04/23/2024
with .repost
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In 1894, babies were ushered into an age of abstemious blandness when the pediatrician Luther Emmett Holt published his enormously influential guide, “The Care and Feeding of Children.” A child’s first non-milk food should be gruel, Holt instructed in one edition. Beef juice could be offered at five or six months if the infant was sickly and anemic, at ten or 11 months if she was hardy and robust. Next might come coddled egg whites and a few sips of orange juice. At 18 months, some prune pulp or baked apple could be allowed, along with stale bread; at two years, baked potato.
In the past two decades, though, another approach has begun to emerge. According to this method’s proponents, babies do not need to be served baby food, because just about any food can be for babies, and the more variety the better: sour, sweet, and savory; crunchy and chewy; tender and tough. This way of feeding babies has come to be called baby-led weaning. “As the name suggests, it requires following a baby’s lead, which some adults find challenging,” Alexandra Schwartz writes. “Babies are, well, babies. What do they know that we don’t?” Swipe to see some babies delighting in their own dietary decisions, and read more about the method at the link in our bio. Photographs by for The New Yorker. Prop styling by ; food styling by .
