>>Anyone have a reference for age of weaning in Western industrialized
nations?  I have always seen 4 years but I was asked for a literature
reference.<<

As far as I have been able to track, this number, usually quoted as 4.2
years, was popularized by Ruth Lawrence in earlier editions of her book. I
tried to track this down, and learned that Ruth obtained this number from a
compendium put out by Ross Labs a number of years ago. When I contacted Ross,
they said that they no longer had copies of this 1982 compendium and thus
were unable to provide the background references for this statistic;
stalemate! If there are any other leads out there, I'd be interested, too.
 While I believe longer term nursing to be more "the norm", I do doubt that 4
years is the world wide average. Kathy Dettwyler?
-Lisa Marasco, LLLL, IBCLC
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