<<Some friends of ours were in a country where many of the women
carried
        their babies in slings.  Curious as to their rationale, they asked a
        few.  The answer was *not*, "Because it makes our babies more
secure"
        etc.   The reply, instead, was "We have no other option."   Now,
this
        was only one particular culture and the one where our friends just
        happened to be, but I found the responses reflective of common
sense.
>>

Inserting myself here into a subject that I find fascinating.  Might as well
throw in my 2 cents, right?  The above point, IMO doesn't detract from the
contention that such a parenting style may well be the biological norm.  For
most of human history, women have breastfed their babies.  I would venture
to say that, prior to the widespread use of ABM, if you asked a woman why
she was breastfeeding, her answer would also be a common sense one, i.e. "I
have no other option."  "What else am I going to feed him?"  Not "Because
it's the best way to feed babies".

One of the things I love about breastfeeding is that very fact - some very
common-sense aspects of breastfeeding have some very deep
not-so-common-sense effects.  For example, as I sometimes ask my prenatal
clients, "Which of two given babies will cry less, one that is held 6 times
a day, or one that is held 10-12 times a day?"  *Common sense* tells them
the one that is held 10-12 times a day.  And yet WHY does a breastfeeding
mother hold her baby 10 times a day?  Because some study told her it would
make her baby more secure?  No.  Rather, it's because if she's going to make
enough breastmilk, she's probably going to be nursing 10 times a day, and
that means she's going to be holding him that often.  She doesn't have to
*know* beforehand that it will benefit him psychologically.  It will anyway,
and along the way she will learn that it did.

        <<There just is no way that I'm going to try to convince a happy
        breastfeeding mother of a happy, healthy breastfed baby that she is
        falling short in some way because she has chosen not to parent in a
mammalian manner.  >>

I agree here.  (My LLL roots are showing here, aren't they?:  old Leaders
don't die, they just dry up, LOL, although I haven't exactly done that yet,
either.  Just ask my youngest, who'll be 5 years old next month <bg>  He'll
be happy to tell you how much milk I have).  Firm believer in attachment
parenting that I am, I wouldn't be caught dead criticizing a mother's
parenting style. I tell them all, when asked about these issues, that it's a
matter of personal parenting philosophy, and that they will encounter MANY
MANY people that claim to be "THE" expert with "THE" right and sole answer
to their questions, but that no one - no nurse, no IBCLC including myself,
no neighbor or relative - has THEIR answer to those questions.  I urge them
to consider their own inner instincts, and to do what they find works best
for their family.

Then I tell them that my own PERSONAL philosophy has served me and my
children quite well, and that if they follow their own instincts, what
various self-proclaimed experts tell them won't really matter.  It'll wash
off their backs like water off a duck.  *If* they really want to further
discuss the issue (which often happens, perhaps precisely because I don't
specify my philosophy until they ask), sometimes I'll get Socratic:  "What
animal are we most similar to, in the world?"  "Monkeys, chimps" is the
usual reply.

"Do they ever put their babies down?", I ask.  "No," they laugh in reply.

"Okay," I tell them, "Human babies are more adaptable than chimpanzees, and
I'm certainly not claiming that you should never put your baby down, but
just bear in mind, once your child is born, that he is BORN wanting to be
HELD - a LOT.  That is an instinct that every human baby is born with, plain
and simple.  You don't "teach" your child to need to be held.  You don't
"spoil" this characteristic into him.  He's born wanting your arms.  How you
choose to handle that fact is your own right & obligation as his parent to
decide."

In my setting (Hispanic immigrant WIC clients in Miami FL), many fear that
very thing -that they'll CAUSE their babies to want to be held.  In point of
fact, most of them want nothing more than to pick up that baby every time it
asks to be held.  It's the culturally-imposed idea that doing so will harm
the baby, an idea that often is in direct opposition to the mother's own
instincts (and to her biology, let's not underestimate the power of
prolactin/oxytocin), that I try to combat in these conversations.

The mother's own inner calling is in opposition to her cultural setting.
That's a torturous place to be......
Regina Roig Lane, BS IBCLC for Miami-Dade County WIC, retired LLLL, and
herself a Cuban, who once lived in that very same torturous place her
clients do

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