Letters to the Editor
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Not that there's anything wrong with that...
Breastfeeding is for nutrition and the nutrition benefit has dried up. It's time to wean. I understand it's a bonding moment, but there comes a time that a behavior is not age-appropriate and a new bonding activity needs to be substituted. All babies take comfort as well as nutrition from the breast, but by the age when it is only comfort you have something that begins to sound icky, namely: your son sucks on your breasts for comfort.
At what age does that become wrong?
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Eldering the Parent
Did all you naysayers miss the fact that the average worldwide weaning age is 4.2? No, you probably didn't actually read the whole article. The only thing here that makes me sick is how willing people are to take anonymous shots at strangers. As a mother, I am sick of listening to other people's rude interventions in my parenting. We have had people call the police because our babies were in the yard naked. If you have a problem with seeing a naked baby - well, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. I would suggest therapy for whatever deep sexual issues make you feel that way. And I suggest the same for anyone who has problems with a nursing child. A woman who was smoking my face once criticized me for nursing my baby in public. Like many people here, my question for you is: which decisions are actually hurting someone else?
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So much misinformation
Reading through many of these letters, I am shocked at what I hear as an almost Freudian misogyny and a lot of misinformation about breast-feeding. Boys growing up to have Oedipal relationships with their mother? Breast milk ceasing to have nutritional value after six months?! (Despite recommendations by the APA to nurse for at least a year, and the WHO for at least two). It is truly no wonder that many women apparently don't enjoy breast-feeding, for contrary to what many readers seem to believe, I believe our culture condemns and rejects breast-feeding, from assigning arbitrary ages to wean, to relegating the nursing mother to the bathroom so as not to offend any eyes, and the prevelance of bottles in formula in hospitals all across the country.
To paraphrase one reader, "Every woman in every culture eventually cuts their child off the tit." (Off the TIT?!) I think this reader circled the very point: *most* women on this planet breast feed. Though it is not always possible for some mothers, it is certainly the best choice. And most children in this world are NOT weaned after one (or even two or three!) years. Yet it would be extremely condescending (and inaccurate!) to suggest that these non-American children are being deprived of nutrition after six months, that they are forming unhealthy attachments with their mothers, that all of their mothers are only continuing to nurse for "selfish" reasons or that the children will grow up unable to comfort themselves. Indeed, there is a mountain of evidence and research to prove the opposite. Breast-feeding is natural, healthy and beautiful.
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Thanks for the lecture, Diane
I'm glad you're confident enough in your sources not to cite them. Guess we'll just have to take your word for it.
"Breast-feeding is natural, healthy and beautiful" -- to you, anyway. But not to everyone. It was extremely painful for my sister so she stopped trying. And she's had the Holier Than Thou breast-feeding police -- all of them women -- lecturing her ever since.
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anonymous responds to dumb guy
LOL!
Actually, the non-whining dad in our family has been, among other things, teaching the kids to ski, hike, camp and has taught his son how to pee standing up, something that a mother definitely cannot do. At this very moment, they are on one of their usual outdoors outings.
I am grateful for the daddy-kid time because, in addition to building strong bonds, it frees me up to do my own things on my own time. I think I'll go for a nice run right now.
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The Third World is hardly an inspiration
They also tell men to have sex with virgins because it's supposed to cure HIV. They also cut off the clitoris and labia of young women. So because they breastfeed their kids longer (mostly because there's not a whole lot of actual food), we're supposed to follow their lead without question?
What is happening here is no longer breastfeeding, as there is no food. It is a woman letting her son suck on her breasts like a grown man would for his own pleasure (comfort generally is pleasurable). That is not healthy.
I wonder how the wives and girlfriends of extended breastfeeders are going to feel about having how their breasts feel/smell/taste compared to Mommy's.
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Response to Anonymous
Don't sell yourself short! Of course a woman can teach a boy how to pee standing up. I was raised by a single mother who managed to work while raising two kids. She taught me to pee standing up, shave, and tie a tie just fine.
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It doesn't matter when you stop...
Wow, 241 responses to this article so far! It just goes to show that no matter when we stopped breast feeding, our lifelong fascination with breasts has never abated! Hurray for breasts!
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We brush our teeth don't we? That's not natural.
One often hears that the worldwide average age of weaning is 4.2 years, but this figure is neither accurate nor meaningful. A survey of 64 "traditional" studies done prior to the 1940s showed a median duration of breastfeeding of about 2.8 years.
Doing things naturally, without scientific knowledge, is not better just because it's natural. We have the benefit of knowledge, science, technology to make our lives better, so the arguement that it's natural, unstained by deliberate human thought, is silly.
And the arguement that other cultures do it is not only wrong, but again silly. Other cultures do a lot of destructive things based on superstition and power. As someone said, some cultures think having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. Some cultures use ciltoral mutulation to control girls.
Most primitive cultures, without birth control, would have a new baby born before the other one reaches 4, so the mother would switch to nursing the new baby. So that aruguement is wrong too. Without birth control, most primitive women wouldn't make it 4 years without getting pregnent again.