I think tandem nursing in "traditional" cultures is, and always has been, extremely rare. Usually, there were post-partum sex taboos to prevent another pregnancy when the mother had a young nursling. These ranged from a few months to many years. For example, among the Gikuyu of Kenya, prior to about the 1960s, children nursed and slept with their mothers until they were 5-6-7 years of age. Then they were weaned and kicked out of mother's bed and dad was allowed back in. Among the Dani of Highland New Guinea, traditionally they abstained from sex for 5 years after each birth, even though the children were only breastfed for 2 years. Even in the absence of long post-partum sex taboos, if the mother had lactational amenorrhea for 2-3 years and then became pregnant again, often the older child would be of an age to be considered old enough to wean, or would wean on their own. And if the mother is undernourished, she tends to have longer lactational amenorrhea than if she is well-nourished, so it is less likely that she'll be faced with another pregnancy when she still has a very young child. In Mali, the traditional post-partum sex taboo was until the child was walking and talking well, so 1-2 years. And when mothers did become pregnant, they weaned as soon as they 'decided' they were pregnant again, because of beliefs that the milk from a pregnant mother would be dangerous for the nursing toddler. Women often didn't 'decide' they were pregnant until well along in the pregnancy, however, for several reasons. They might experience a missed menstrual period for many reasons, including increased frequency of nursing by a sick child or malnutrition or illness in the mother, so they didn't necessarily interpret a skipped period as being pregnant. Also, many many pregnancies ended in early miscarriage, especially during the rainy season when malaria was prevalent, so they wouldn't wean their toddler until they were pretty darn sure they were pregnant and weren't going to have an early miscarriage. In Mali, grandmothers might tandem nurse with a grandchild while they babysat. I suspect that the society with the highest level of tandem nursing is the modern day United States, where we combine excellent nutrition in the mothers with semi-scheduled feedings and sleeping through the night at an early age and only six weeks of post-partum sex taboos -- such that the mother's fecundity returns early and she gets pregnant again, while still devoted to the idea of child-led weaning. I'm sure my sample of mothers nursing children to age 3 and beyond has a much higher percentage of tandem nursing situations than any where in the world or any time else in the history of the world. Kathy Dettwyler _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html