>She says that she doesn't believe tandem nursing is common in
>other cultures at all, and is bothered when moms try to say that because other
>cultures tandem nurse, then it is "okay" to do it here.

The LLL mom is correct that tandem nursing is not common in a lot of
cultures.  It is probably more common among that subset of women in western
industrial countries who believe in baby-led weaning than it is among the
general public in other places.  Mothers in the United States should not
need to resort to the logic of "they do it in New Guinea, or Africa, or
_______, therefore it is OK for me to do it here."  It should just be OK to
do it here if both mother and children want to because it meets the needs of
the children, and is perfectly fine and normal and healthy behavior.

>She seems to think
>that most other cultures wean the older nursling when the next baby is on the
>way.

The LLL mom is correct that in many "traditional" cultures, the older baby
is weaned either before the mother gets pregnant again, or when the mother
realizes she *is* pregnant again.  These mothers are usually not getting
pregnant again as soon as women in western industrialized countries because:
(1) they practice post-partum abstinence (NO SEX) until the baby is a
certain age or developmental level, such as "walking well," "talking well,"
or even "no longer nursing," even if this means NO SEX for 2-3-4 years after
each birth; remember that sometimes the husband has other wives
(2) they experience much longer lactational amenorrhea than most women in
western industrialized countries because
        (a) they nurse much more frequently during the day
        (b) they sleep with their children at night and nurse more often then as
            well
        (c) those who are marginally nourished experience longer lactational
            amenorrhea for the same intensity of breastfeeding than their well-
            nourished western counterpart
(3)  they have many more miscarriages due to sickness, especially malaria,
so they may be getting pregnant again, but the pregnancy doesn't proceed
(4) they know ways of preventing pregnancy and/or terminating a pregnancy in
the early months that are not recognized by western medicine as
"contraception" -- so they don't get pregnant (or the pregnancy ends in
"miscarriage") even though they don't seem to be using contraceptives

A good source for reading about these issues is Valerie Hull and Mayling
Simpson's 1985 edited book "Breastfeeding, Child Health, and Child Spacing."


>My point to her was that (and she seemed to agree) if other cultures
>traditionally nurse children until ages 2,3,4,5 or older, then *somebody* must
>be tandem nursing!

Not necessarily.  See above.  Also, the child who nursed until 5 or 6 or 7
was often the "last" child in the family, and nursed that long in part
because there were no more children coming along to displace them.  Remember
that while my research suggests 2.5 years to 7.0 years as the normal range
of breastfeeding in modern humans based purely on physiological/biological
grounds, that humans have been modifying this with cultural beliefs and
behaviors for many years, probably since the discovery of how to control
fire, close to 1 million years ago.  Evolution by natural selection favors
those who have the most surviving children, so taking a 6-7 year birth
interval and cutting it back to 4-5 years would give those individuals or
populations who could do so (and still have the same % of children survive)
an advantage.

>The mom also seemed to think that the main reason that a child would be
>nursing into toddlerhood and beyond is because their is a paucity of other
>food in their environment, or that the family is poor.

This is incorrect.  Children nurse into toddlerhood and beyond because that
is how they are programmed genetically, they benefit from the nutrition, the
immunological factors, the brain-growing long-chain polyunsaturated fatty
acids, the emotional bonding, etc.  It is a misconception that women only
practice extended nursing (in the US or any other culture) because they
"have to" -- and that everyone would stop it as soon as feasible if they
could.  This is the "nursing is a huge hassle" perception of breastfeeding,
which some women find to be true, but most do not.

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition