The therapist has heard
>from all sorts of sources that BF longer than 3 years hinders speech
>development because the tongue thrusts forward which is then therefore not
>good for speech development.

This is ludicrous.  If it were true, then people all over the world who
nursed for 3-4 years (extremely common in traditional cultures) would have
speech problems, and of course they don't.  In fact, in non-literate
populations, especially where many different ethnic groups with different
languages live near each other, people often speak 4, 5, 6, 7, or more
languages, fluently.  In Mali (West Africa) where I do most of my research,
the largest ethnic group is Bambara, and everyone who is Bambara speaks
Bambara, but so does everyone else, so they can communicate with the Bambara
majority.  Anyone who has been to school speaks French, most of them speak
some Arabic from going to Koranic school, and then everybody speaks 3 or 4
of the other local languages.  My field assistant, Moussa Diarra, spoke
Bambara, French, English, Fulani, Senufo, Bobo, and some Wolof.  He was
*typical* except for the English.


  The baby's psychologist
>says that a child who nurses too long (2 years???) can't development the
>concept that the mother is separate at the normal time of development.  Does
>BF have anything to do with effecting normal stages of psychological
>development!!??  This is a new one on me.  And anyway, since most studies
>have been done in this dept.  with bottle fed babies, who knows what normal
>is?


Again, most of the world then can't figure out who their mother
is......stupid ideas like this really piss me off.  If my husband were here
he'd be saying in a gentle voice "And now would you like to tell us how you
feel about this issue?"

Pick up almost *any* developmental psychology text book and try-try-try to
find breastfeeding or lactation or co-sleeping (normal infant states) in the
index.  They just assume that "human" means "middle-class white American,
bottle-fed, solitary sleeping, goal is to be independent as soon as
possible" and go on from those very culture-bound assumptions.

Tell the baby's psychologist that my research indicates that human children
are designed to be breastfed from 2.5 years to 7.0 years.  That's an
absolute *minimum* of 2.5 years, and many of the predictors point to much
longer (based on gestation length, it should be 4.5 years, based on tooth
eruption it should be 5.5-6.0 years).

The 4.2 "average length of weaning" figure is made up, not real.  Prior to
the widespread promotion and use of infant formula and the spread of Western
ideas about appropriate length of breastfeeding, children were routinely
nursed for an average of 2.8 years (sample of 64 "traditional" cultures from
around the world in the 1940s), and many still nurse children for 3-4 years,
which seems to be the common age for children giving it up on their own.

Anecdotal data:  My son Alexander, who is still nursing at 4.2 years, was
tested for his language development at 23 months (just for fun, because I
was curious how far ahead he was).  At 23 months, he could do everything the
testers brought with them, which was all the materials for up to 36 months.
They didn't bother to bring the materials for beyond 36 months because they
figured he couldn't be *that* far ahead.  He was.  He could easily do
everything that 3 year olds are supposed to be able to do.  His first
complete sentence, at 23 months, was "I want my daddy to take me to a
football game."  Now granted it was 11 p.m. at night, in July (not football
season) and he really had no idea what a football game was.......

At 4 years of age he has the vocabulary of a 12 year old, and though he does
say some things incorrectly (buh-dult instead of adult) that's more because
we encourage them for their cuteness than because he doesn't know how to say
them correctly.


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Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.                         email: [log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352