>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