I think it is safe to say that many complex forces drive population
increases and decreases.  It might easily be argued that information about
garbage disposal and potable water have played the major role in population
increase because they so effectively reduce disease.  Immunization,
antibiotics, safer birth practices, wars all drive population forces.
Infant mortality was so enormous in previous eras and still is in some
regions that I don't think it does "make sense" that breastfeeding per se
allowed population increases.  When breastfeeding alone consisted of the
baby's first immunization and only nutrition it  protected enough infants
that the race ENDURED.  Now that is a great big contribution, but evidence
suggests that only the strong endured.  I believe that many of the babies we
see today whose mothers don't have enough milk, or who are born small,
injured, weak, sick or have minor oral-motor anomalies were precisely the
population of infants who sickened and died in earlier times, and who
continue to die today in areas where there are no additional interventions
to protect them.

Population research data is also clear about one fact:  Birth rates decline
when infant mortality declines.  In other words, as women become sure that
their off-spring are likely to survive, they tend to have fewer children.
The trend towards smaller families is very rapid (in time spans as short as
one decade) when the environment favors it. Maternal focus becomes
maximizing the potentials of the children they do have, rather than of
having as many as possible so as to ensure some will survive.  There are
obvious exceptions to this pattern such as groups who are deliberately
trying to have many children in order to re-inforce the numbers of an
endangered group, etc.

Barbara Wilson-Clay, BS, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates
LactNews Press
www.lactnews.com

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