Patricia: Nutritional benefits of breastfeeding are just the same at any age: best quality protein, non-allergenic, huge quantities of essential long chain fatty acids, best iron absorption among all known foods, all the vitamins and minerals in optimal concentrations. If this guardian (have mothers a guardian in the USA? oh, dear!) is implying "prove me that your son will die if weaned, or wean NOW!), tha same thing can be said of any other food. Do he need a reference about nutritional benefit of apples, bread, cheese, chocolate, chop-suey, hot dogs or cola-loca? Will the poor child be allowed to eat something, or just be starved until references are found? The problem is not of references, but of prejudices. Fiona: This "risk of bf after a year" comes from a British paper, maybe in BMJ about 2 years ago? (sorry, forgot reference). Hearth problems of several hundred Scottish people (aged 60, I think) was correlated with type of feeding, as stated in old charts. Breastfeeding was associated with a lower risk of hearth disease; but breastfeeding longer than 1 year was associated with a higher risk. Of course, this kind of retroretroretrospective study is only useful to raise hypothesis: to many factors are not taken into account (social and cultural variables associated with lenght of BF at these remote times, parental smoking, family diet in childhood... wath about the people who has dead before reaching the age to enter the study, were they bottle- or breastfed?) Even if this was confirmed (and I doubt it will), the risk of hearth disease should be compared to other risks of short breastfeeding (breast cancer and osteoporosis in the mother, diabetes and otitis in the child...) Best wishes Carlos Gonzalez Barcelona