<quote> In the United States, I think the term "weaning" has been used as "taking away" in a negative  sense.  You "wean" children from pacifiers.  You "wean" 
 children from sucking on their thumb.  You "wean" toddlers from clinging to your leg at nursery school.  You "wean" babies from the breast.  "Weaning" among the moms I have 
 worked with really means imposing your will to ensure your baby or child stops that "BAD BABY HABIT".  I sort of think of it in terms of how "breaking" a horse was used to define "training" a horse. <unquote>
I can't resist chiming in.
I think here in the U.S. outside of breastfeeding circles weaning is mosdt commonly understood as it's used in regards to drugs.  Weaning off a drug means, yes, getting rid of it, but gradually in a way that minimizes the symptoms of withdrawal.  It's not as punitive as "breaking" a habit.
My own revelation about the word came with my second baby (Ian, who LOVED nursing with an intensity I hadn't experienced with my first).  I realized that weaning didn't have to be something I did to my baby.  I'd always understood you needed to wean you child just like you needed to potty-train them.  In my case, luckily, pregnancy did most of the weaning for me with my first, as he lost interest during my pregnancy - combined with my offering him WAY too much juice, but that's another story.  But with Ian, I had to concoiously decide to let him continue even throughout a pregnancy when I'd have soon have not been nursing any more.
So weaning changed meaning for me just like breastfeeding did - they're both usually used to mean something the mother does to the baby, when in reality, if allowed to take the lead, it can be the baby who breastfeeds and the baby who eventually weans.  Maybe the most accurate way to describe it is that the dyad nurses and the dyad weans.
Marcia McCoy, IBCLC
who's such a wonk when it comes to language :)


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