>For example, my twenty month old does not NEED to nurse several times a
night for nutrition.

He may not NEED to nurse several times a night for nutrition, but he MAY
need to nurse several times a night for other reasons.  Breastfeeding is
more than nutrition.

>I think that when we talk about modeling ourselves after women in
traditional societies and nursing on demand all night for as long as the
child wants to....we forget many
differences (Kathy D could probably help here) in our culture and
traditional ones.

Yes, like that most women in "traditional cultures" will wake before dawn to
cook over an open fire, walk several miles during the course of the day to
get water and/or firewood, spend several hours a day pounding millet into
flour for meals, wash their family's clothes by hand at the river, work in
the fields (or milking the animals) for many hours, cook lunch, cook dinner,
and on and on and on.  All with, for the most part, a less nutritious diet
and NO modern medical care so that they may have malaria or anemia or
tropical ulcers, or even just a headache, and did I mention intestinal
parasites.... and they go to women's group meetings at night, after 11 pm,
when their work is done, to try to learn how to improve their lives and
increases their children's chances of survival and health -- and then they
go to sleep for a few hours and get up and do it all over again.  And YES,
their toddlers wake them several times a night to nurse, but I *never ever*
heard anyone complain about it.  Because they know it is normal toddler
behavior, and they know life is hard.

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition
Texas A&M University