I've spent my career studying how culture affects biology, so I certainly recognize that it does. I was just saying that we have to get away from studying one particular cultural set of behaviors and claiming that the biological results (how long babies sleep at night) apply to all other situations. >Hardly anyone carries her baby all the time, and sleeps with her baby, and >feeds her baby several times an hour without ever thinking about it as 'a >feed' ...for months and then, with some changes, for years. I know it is hard not to assume that everyone shares our cultural beliefs and practices, but remember that most women in the world carry their baby (or someone else carries the baby), and most women in the world sleep with their babies and many do indeed feed their babies several times an hour around the clock for a few minutes each time. Western industrialized cultural beliefs and behaviors represent only a small fraction of the women in the world. And even in the US, some women also carry their babies, sleep with them, and nurse them very often around the clock, for many years. So let's not "normalize" scheduled feeding and solitary sleeping and claim that it is impossible for modern women to parent in a more natural way, because in fact, most women in the world still do practice attachment parenting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. email: [log in to unmask] Anthropology Department phone: (409) 845-5256 Texas A&M University fax: (409) 845-4070 College Station, TX 77843-4352 http://www.prairienet.org/laleche/dettwyler.html *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html