Diane T. Herforth writes:
>
>I tell mothers that in our culture, most babies wean themselves around 18
>months.  There are some babies who for one reason or another need to breastfeed
>longer.  If they need breastfeeding longer then we need to wait for the next
>window of weaning.


Just have to chime in here.  As most of you know, this is one of my research
areas -- I'm not sure what "culture" Diane is referring to here, if she
means LLL moms, or who.  Certainly in the U.S. in general, about 50% of
babies are weaned at birth (i.e. never breastfeed) and many more are weaned
from the breast in the first weeks and months of life.  I have no idea what
the typical age is for giving up the bottle in a bottle-feeding family in
the U.s. today.  Children who live in places where they are allowed to nurse
pretty much whenever they want, and who co-sleep with mom and nurse at
night, and where mom thinks it is perfectly normal for child to nurse often
and for various reasons (hunger, thirst, sickness, sadness, etc.) ---- in
those circumstances, children usually wean themselves between the ages of 3
and 4 years.  This has been reported from many different cultures all around
the world.  My own research suggests that the "natural age" of weaning in
humans is between 2.5 years and 7 years, and that many children have very
strong instinctive urges to suck until 7 years, and some beyond.  It isn't
that a few children "for one reason or another need to breastfeed longer" --
rather it seems to be the case that all children need to breastfeed for 2.5
years as a minimum, and most for 3-4 years.  In those cases where people say
their baby "weaned him/herself" at an age earlier than 2 years, I suspect
that there was some incident that interrupted the nursing (what we call a
"nursing strike") that was interpreted by the mother as weaning, and/or
subtle or not so subtle cues to the child by the mother than it really
wasn't OK to nurse anymore, leading to decreased frequency and thus lower
supply, until child gave up because there was no milk and they were picking
up the cues loud and clear that this was not something mom really wanted
them to be doing.

Kathy Dettwyler