Wanting to present a slightly different point of view to the one Kathy
Miller described about Indian mothers being seen as "dirty" so that the
grandmother cares for the baby for the first 6 months.

We have a fairly large Indian population so I have quite a few Indian
clients.  While I find that some of them seem to be very ambivalent about
breastfeeding, though they would never be so confrontational as to come
right out and *say* so to me, there are more nowadays who seem to be very
eager to breastfeed. The cultural practice is for the wife to become part of
the husband's family when she marries, and her mother-in-law is in charge of
the household.  When she has her babies, and especially her first, she goes
home to her own mother for 40 days, where she is cossetted and taken care of
and fed special milk-producing foods (containing fenugreek!) and made much
of.  And she also receives a lot of help with the baby of course.  But to
say that the grandmother has total care of the baby would be exaggerating.
If, for some reason, the mother is unable to return to her own parents'
home, then her mother comes to her in-laws home and seems to take charge of
things, fielding the visitors, caring for the mother, acting as a buffer
between the mother and her usual responsibilities (which are mostly to keep
her husband happy!).

In fact I see this cultural practice as so beneficial to mother-baby
togetherness, and to breastfeeding, that I wish it was made law for *every*
mother.

Pamela Morrison IBCLC, Zimbabwe