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Chapters

0:00 Introduction
0:53 When is the best time to wean your kid from the pacifier
2:08 How to wean your kid off a pacifier


A pacifier is a rubber, plastic, or silicone nipple substitute given to an infant to suckle upon between feedings to quiet its distress by satisfying the need to suck when it does not need to eat. Pacifiers normally have three parts, an elongated teat, a mouth shield, and a handle. The mouth shield is large enough to prevent the child from attempting to take the pacifier into its mouth, and so forecloses the danger that the child will swallow then choke on it.

Pacifiers have many different informal names: binky or wookie (American English), dummy (Australian English and British English), soother (Canadian English and Hiberno-English[1]), and Dodie (Hiberno-English[2]). Pacifiers were mentioned for the first time in medical literature in 1473, being described by German physician Bartholomäus Metlinger in his book Kinderbüchlein, in later editions retitled Regiment der jungen Kinder ("Caring For Young Children").

In England in the 17th–19th centuries, a coral was a teething toy made of coral, ivory or bone, often mounted in silver as the handle of a rattle.[3] A museum curator has suggested that these substances were used as "sympathetic magic"[4] and that the animal bone could symbolize animal strength to help the child cope with pain.

Pacifiers were a development of hard teething rings, but they were also a substitute for the softer sugar tits, sugar-teats or sugar-rags[5] which had been in use in 19th century America. A writer in 1873 described a "sugar-teat" made from "a small piece of old linen" with a "spoonful of rather sandy sugar in the center of it", "gathered ... up into a little ball" with a thread tied tightly around it.[6] Rags with foodstuffs tied inside were also given to babies in many parts of Northern Europe and elsewhere. In some places a lump of meat or fat was tied in cloth, and sometimes the rag was moistened with brandy. German-speaking areas might use Lutschbeutel, cloth wrapped around sweetened bread or poppy-seeds.
Albrecht Dürer – Madonna with the Siskin, 1506
Albrecht Dürer – Madonna with the Siskin detail, 1506

A Madonna and child painted by Dürer in 1506[7] shows one of these tied-cloth "pacifiers" in the baby's hand.

Pacifiers were settling into their modern form around 1900 when the first teat, shield and handle design was patented in the US as a "baby comforter" by Manhattan pharmacist Christian W. Meinecke.[8] Rubber had been used in flexible teethers sold as "elastic gum rings" for British babies in the mid-19th century,[9] and also used for feeding-bottle teats. In 1902, Sears, Roebuck & Co. advertised a "new style rubber teething ring, with one hard and one soft nipple".[9] And in 1909 someone calling herself "Auntie Pacifier" wrote to the New York Times to warn of the "menace to health" (she meant dental health) of "the persistent, and, among poorer classes, the universal sucking of a rubber nipple sold as a 'pacifier'."[10] In England too, dummies were seen as something the poorer classes would use, and associated with poor hygiene. In 1914 a London doctor complained about "the dummy teat": "If it falls on the floor it is rubbed momentarily on the mother's blouse or apron, lipped by the mother and replaced in the baby's mouth."[11]

Early pacifiers were manufactured with a choice of black, maroon or white rubber, though the white rubber of the day contained a certain amount of lead. Binky (with a y) was first used in about 1935 as a trademarked brand name for pacifiers and other baby products manufactured by the Binky Baby Products Company of New York. The brand name is currently owned by Playtex Products, LLC as a trademark in the U.S. (and a number of other countries).[12]