I have two thoughts on this:

Many years ago I heard Michel Odent speak, and he described an incident (and 
showed us pictures) where a new mother who was bottlefeeding kept wanting to 
lie her baby flat on its back on a table to give the baby the bottle. The 
nurses were concerned, and kept trying to get the mother to hold the baby in 
a more normal way, but left to her own devices she'd go back to putting the 
baby flat on the table. Finally the baby's grandmother (the mother's mother) 
showed up, and was stunned to see what was happening. Turns out that the 
mother had been born with some defect in her digestive system (I'm sure he 
told us the name but I forget it) and needed to be fed lying flat on her 
back on the table for the first three or four months, until surgery 
corrected the problem.

Odent suggested that we have strong unconscious memories of how we are fed 
and cared for as infants, and that we tend to duplicate these when we have 
our own babies. I think this might explain why many mothers today (who were 
probably bottlefed) have such a hard time getting a good breastfeeding 
position and latch, and would also explain why mothers who were themselves 
breastfed have an easier time - they have those unconscious memories of how 
breastfeeding works.

Secondly, I remember reading something that said the reason women generally 
live longer than men is because in evolutionary terms, grandmothers are more 
important than grandfathers. They had research that showed having a 
grandmother around is likely to promote the survival of the grandchildren. 
So that theory supports Diane's thinking - it may be the hormonal influence, 
or the knowledge of breastfeeding or baby care, but grandmothers do seem to 
help.

Teresa Pitman 

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