Dana Louise Raphael (January 5, 1926 – February 2, 2016) was an American medical anthropologist. She was a strong advocate of

breastfeeding Breastfeeding, also known as nursing, is the process where breast milk is fed to a child. Infants may suck the milk directly from the breast, or milk may be extracted with a Breast pump, pump and then fed to the infant. The World Health Orga ...

and promoted the movement to recruit non-medical care-givers to assist mothers during and after childbirth. She called such care-givers " doulas." The term " doula" (pronounced do͞olə; from Ancient Greek δούλη, a female slave) was popularized in her 1973 book "The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding." She also coined the term “matrescence,” the rite of passage where “changes occur in a woman's physical state, in her status within the group, in her emotional life, in her focus of daily activity, in her own identity, and in her relationships with all those around her” through new motherhood.

Early life and education

Dana Louise Raphael was born in

New Britain, Connecticut New Britain is a city in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It is located approximately southwest of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. The city is part of the Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut, Capitol ...

, on January 5, 1926, the daughter of Louis Raphael, who owned a department store chain, and the former Naomi Kaplan. Raphael received her bachelor's degree and Ph.D. in

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, which was supervised by

Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Col ...

. Her research was not always respected: some Columbia faculty called her “the Tit Lady.”

Career

Work on breastfeeding

Having avoided a conventional wedding and refused to take her husband's name (unusual in the 1950s), she rejected the common practice of bottle-feeding, but had difficulty breastfeeding her first-born son. ”I lacked the knowledge and the assistance needed to let down my milk,” she later said. “The more my hungry son screamed, the guiltier I felt.” She observed that new mothers had less social support than earlier in human history and that the sexualization of breasts in the postwar United States had led to cultural attitudes against breastfeeding. Her research methods included surveying people she met throughout New York City and studying new motherhood in other countries. In 1975, Raphael and Mead founded The Human Lactation Center, an institute devoted to researching patterns of

lactation Lactation describes the secretion of milk from the mammary glands and the period of time that a mother lactates to feed her young. The process naturally occurs with all sexually mature female mammals, although it may predate mammals. The process ...

worldwide. Their research found that impoverished women were often too undernourished and stressed to breastfeed, and in these cases, formula was important and even essential.

Recognizing ''doulas''

Related to her work on breastfeeding was the concept of the doula. She learned the word "doula" from a woman in Greece who told her that it means female slave and Raphael thought the word slave fitted the role of a woman who helps a nursing mother by taking on other work in the home; Raphael then used the term in her 1966 dissertation on cross-cultural practices of breast-feeding before making the term more public in a magazine article in 1969. She gave it more widespread currency in "The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding" in 1976.

Theory of matrescence

As an overarching framework for this study of maternity and early infant care, Raphael's theory of matrescence named motherhood as a significant social, cultural, political, and biological rite of passage. Matrescence goes beyond gestation and maternity, she wrote,” in part because attitudes about when and how women become mothers and care for infants differ across cultures. “Giving birth,” she wrote, “does not automatically make a mother out of a woman.”

Personal life

Dana Raphael was married to Howard Boone Jacobson, with whom she had three children: Seth, Jessa, and Brett. She breastfed her second child for five years. Her third child was adopted, and Raphael induced lactation so that she could breastfeed. Raphael died of complications arising from congestive heart failure on 2 February 2016 at her home in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Selected publications

;Books * * * *

Articles

Raphael, Dana. “The Midwife As Doula: A Guide to Mothering the Mother,” ''Journal of Nurse-Midwifery'', 26(6), Nov-Dec 1981, pp. 13-15.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Raphael, Dana 20th-century American anthropologists 20th-century American women writers American health and wellness writers Medical anthropologists American women anthropologists Jewish American social scientists Jewish American non-fiction writers Breastfeeding activists Breastfeeding in the United States Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni People from New Britain, Connecticut 1926 births 2016 deaths