>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.

I might add to that by saying that once we see our end of the bell
curve as being the middle of the bell curve, we put mothers and babies
at risk who can't live comfortably at that end.  Like the 2 hour
feeding thing.  I think my kids would have starved if I had adhered to
that spacing.  Yet it's viewed as the short end of the bell curve, not
the long end.  Which means the 15-30 minute baby is seen as an
unacceptable extreme, and the baby who "self-weans" at 8 months
(perhaps out of an unwillingness to have to negotiate for every
"untimely" feed) is seen as pretty normal.  And we begin to accept as
normal all the aberrations that go along with aberrant feeding
patterns.  Better we should start with trying to find a physiological
norm, acknowledge the ways in which we *choose* not to match that
norm, and be intelligently prepared for the possible consequences of
that choice.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY

             ***********************************************
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