Laurie asks if other have gone into the closet when nursing older children.

Yes, Laurie.  I am in awe of those who publicly breastfeed older children.  I did 
breastfeed both of my children in public into their threes -- not all the time, but in 
situations in which breastfeeding was clearly going to transform a miserable child into a 
content, sleeping one.  

Now I am breastfeeding a 4.5-yr-old in North Yorkshire, and really don't care to call much 
attention to it.  What I find is that even my most liberal, open-minded friends, those who 
were cool with toddler nursing, are disturbed by breastfeeding into early childhood.  All 
that cultural conditioning that says, "Breastfeeding beyond a certain age is more for the 
mother than for the child" kicks in, even in the minds of the most sensible people.  

Aside from friends within the lactavist, lactitioner community, I do have a couple of 
friends who know I am still breastfeeding Evelyn and that I breastfed my son until he was 
4.  I know that for both of them, this has been an education, and that knowing our family 
and observing our dynamic has forced them to cast aside the stereotypes they had of 
people who breastfeed older children.  I am optimistic that their new awareness will pay 
dividends.  One of these friends has a 1-yr-old who has now breastfed much longer than 
her older siblings did, and I think my friend feels quite liberated to keep breastfeeding 
and co-sleeping in large part because of my example.  The other friend is an occupational 
therapist, and I must immodestly say that I am quite proud of myself whenever I manage 
to educate a healthcare professional about breastfeeding. 

But breastfeeding my daughter, who looks about a year older than she is, out in public, is 
too scary for me.  And, like Laurie, I feel that if certain people knew she still breastfeeds, 
it's possible that they might construe this as so inappropriate as to warrant intervention.

And this is outrageous.  I second everything Morgan said about breastfeeding toddlers.  
My son had an illness just like the one she describes her son as having when my son was 
just shy of three, and he came through it brilliantly when many other children were being 
hospitalized.  And, as Morgan mentioned, the protection I am getting against breast 
cancer increases *significantly* with each year that I continue to breastfeed.  There is a 
an outstanding 2002 metastudy that documents this dose effect superbly.

And of course there is Katherine Dettwyler's work, and the fact that in many societies, 
breastfeeding beyond age four is no big deal and quite common, and loads of other stuff 
to recommend this biologically normal activity.

But if people aren't ready to hear it, they will revert back to their learned bigotry no 
matter how reasonable the argument for biologically normal breastfeeding.  Last year on 
salon.com, a writer published a lovely essay about her experience breastfeeding her 4-
yr-old, and in it she deftly answered almost every possible objection people might have 
to breastfeeding beyond toddlerhood.  It didn't matter.  The letter writers almost 
uniformily disregarded everything she had said and accused her of perversion, permissive 
parenting, having a sexless marriage and all sorts of other bizarre things that could not 
have possibly been deduced from her article.

No conclusive answers here, just continued fascination with such deep-seated societal 
fear of and hostility toward something so obviously normal and adaptive.

Kerry Ose, PhD

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