I do believe the 11 year old who was "still" breastfeeding was a girl, if
that makes any difference, and of the three 9 year olds in my survey, all
three were boys (now grown), and one was mentally retarded from birth, if
that makes any difference.  Also, the 11 year old was the oldest of three
children who were all still nursing, if THAT makes any difference.  The mom
also had a nursing 7 year old and a nursing 3 year old.

I think that children who nurse for a long time grow up with a completely
different view of women's breasts, despite being exposed to all the cultural
messages in the US that bombard us all about breasts as sex objects.  I have
talked to quite a few teens and adults, both males and females, who remember
their long-term nursing experiences, and they are more "bemused" by the idea
of breasts as sex objects than anything else -- very much like American
college students are "bemused" by the idea of Malian men finding women's
thighs to be hot stuff, or men in the Congo finding women's buttocks to be
hot stuff, or people in Japan being turned on by the nape of women's necks.

They are certainly aware of how others in the US perceive breasts, but they
haven't learned to view breasts that way at the gut level that non-long-term
breastfed kids have.  Remember, too, that many long-term breastfed kids in
the US are part of LLL "culture" and so it isn't just their own experiences
that they are working off of.  They have grown up seeing many many other
children of all ages nursing for extended periods, they've seen tandem
nursing, they've seen lots of different mothers' breasts, and when they see
breasts, they think "breastfeeding/love/comfort/peace" -- not sexual arousal.

So I don't buy the argument that all children, or even all boys, or even
some boys, will somehow magically realize, when they reach a certain age,
that they are "having sex" with their mother.  Because they aren't.  And I
haven't heard of any older nurslings in the US being teased or ridiculed
about "still nursing" by their non-nursing peers, because it is mostly
hidden in the US -- both deliberately, and just by the fact that older
nurslings often nurse only once or twice a day, usually in bed.  In cultures
where life is lived "in the open," a child who is nursing longer than the
norm might well be teased by his playmates about "Going home to Momma to
nurse" and might therefore wean due to peer pressure not to be a "baby" --
but not because it is sexual.

In many cultures, men touch each other all the time -- they hold hands, they
stand with their arms over each other's shoulders, or with their arms around
each other's waists, they hug and kiss when they greet -- and this has
absolutely nothing to do with sex or homosexuality.  The US is atypical in
defineing physical touch and physical pleasure as being sexual unless
clearly otherwise (like a mother kissing a baby).  Americans, in particular,
have a very difficult time understanding that physical contact and physical
pleasure are not necessarily sexual.

I don't think there is any age at which nursing a child is inappropriate
provided the relationship between mother and child is otherwise normal and
healthy.  Long before I got into doing research on long-term breastfeeding,
I heard a news story about a woman on the east coast of the US who went
every day to visit her severely retarded son in the institution where he
lived, and she breastfed him during each visit -- and he was 21 years old at
the time.  It was presented as a very loving and generous thing that she did
for him, and I was moved to tears at the time, and still am.

Having said all of the above, some women do have unhealthy and bizarre
relationships with their children, and do use their children for sexual
pleasure, both through breastfeeding and other behaviors.  They may
fantasize that the child is their "dream lover."  This can happen with a
newborn or infant, as well as with an older child -- it is not age-related.
But this is a completely different set of issues from the normal, healthy,
species-appropriate breastfeeding relationship between mothers and children.

Remember that my research strongly points to 6-7 years as being the upper
limit of normal/typical duration of breastfeeding for humans.  So the
occasional child who nurses til 8 or 9 (or even 11) is like the occasional
child who doesn't get teeth til past one year, or doesn't walk til 18
months, or doesn't talk til 3.  At one extreme of the range of normal, but
not necessarily "delayed".

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition
Texas A&M University

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