I have one thought about why some cultures might have gotten to the point of not breastfeeding their babies, as a general rule. I wonder if high infant mortality rates resulted in women attempting to protect themselves from grief by not getting attached to their babies, in the first place. Of course the practice of artificial feeding greatly increased the mortality rates, but individual cultures often hang onto ideas, despite glaring physical evidence of the fallacy of them (including modern Western cultures). Also, once a practice has become common, people often perpetuate it with no idea of how, or why, it ever started in the first place. I suspect that religious beliefs would have played a part in the establishment of a practice of artificial infant feeding, too, if people believed in predestination and therefore did not feel like anything they did affected whether or not a baby survived. I would be willing to bet that there were many young mothers who had the instinct to want to breastfeed their babies and had to be dissuaded from doing so. I would love to hear more about this topic, including such practices as more wealthy women having their babies breastfed by others, and also the belief that colostrum was poisonous. Darillyn "After reading the interesting post from Rachel on infant feeding history in Iceland and Norway, along with a great talk I heard yesterday at a conference by Anne Merewood on the history of infant formula, I have a couple of pondering questions. Why do women not want to breastfeed their children? Now, I am talking about the past when I asked this question not the modern day mother. According to history, women having been trying to give their babies other food and drink besides breast milk long before any formula companies were developed. Certainly these companies took an advantage of a trend they observed and then pushed it even more. But why did women look to not give their own milk, or any human milk to their babies when it is readily there and so nurturing? Maybe someone with an anthropology background or sociology may help me understand this. I wonder if the human, who thinks about their world and questions it verses just flowing with instinctual traits, messes us up? Ann Perry, RN IBCLC Boston, MA" *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html