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Subject:
From:
Katherine Dettwyler <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 2 Jan 2001 10:55:57 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
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Someone wrote, about Biblical evidence for late weaning:

>The fathers didn't take their sons to the fields with them until they were
>weaned, and I can't see a father taking a 4 year old, can >you?  Even today
>most husbands won't take their 4 year old in the >backyard, let alone to
>herd sheep in the high country.

We have to be careful about assuming that other cultures have the same
beliefs and practices as modern day US (or even that modern day US has one
uniform set of beliefs and practices).  In many parts of the world, children
as young as 2 or 3 years of age are put in charge of livestock such as the
calves or lambs or the pigs -- usually not big adult animals.  They are
responsible for taking them from the family homestead out to pasture some
distance away, protecting them, guiding them, and then bringing them back
home several hours later.  Then they go nurse from their moms!  Likewise, in
many cultures, children as young as 4 years of age are left in charge of
their younger siblings while mom goes to the market or works in the field.

It is a specifically US cultural belief that young children are incapable of
behaving responsibly and contributing to the family economy.  The whole idea
of a carefree idyllic childhood, free of labor (note child labor laws) is
culturally defined.  In cultures where 2 year olds are taught how to herd
the animals, and expected to do so, they do.  In cultures where 4 year olds
are taught how to watch their younger siblings, they do.  In Mali, not only
are 3 year olds sent to the market to bargain for food (and entrusted with
the money, and expected to know how to count the change), 4 year olds often
gather in groups, each with a baby on their back, for play time every
morning, and 6 year olds start pounding millet and cooking and chopping
firewood and hauling water.  This is especially true of the girls, who are
held to a much higher standard than the boys.  Boys get to goof off most of
childhood.

So, knowing that in Biblical times in the Middle East, fathers didn't take
their sons with them to the fields until they were weaned, doesn't really
tell us anything about what age that might have been.  It might have been 2
years, it might have been 6 or 7 years.

In the Koran, there is strong language to the effect that if a couple is
getting divorced and there is a young child, he MUST stay with his mother
until he two years old, so he can nurse.  After that time, his father can
claim him.  If the father wants him before two years, he must agree to pay
for a wet nurse.  Thus, a MINIMUM of two years of nursing was standard in
the days of Mohammed, and it was considered sufficiently important to have
specific regulations put into the Koran about it.

Kathy Dettwyler
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