The best I ever heard was a French woman in Mali, who weaned her child at 4 months because breastfeeding "made her breasts too big, and they got in the way when she wanted to play tennis." I'm still shaking my head over that one. I think we need to cultivate a more understanding attitude towards mothers who choose bottle-feeding because they've been told over and over that it's the normal thing to do, equal to breastfeeding, painless, less time consuming, etc. Just as we need to be understanding of women who get breast implants because they accept our culture's definition of the sexy, attractive woman as someone who is thin but has big breasts. Ditto for understanding women who choose abortion of fetuses of children with Down Syndrome because doctors, friends, neighbors, and co-workers all told them that their child would be severely mentally retarded and lead a useless pain-filled life. It is *hard* to step back from immersion in one's culture and see the negative aspects of the messages you hear constantly from day one, from everyone. It takes a lot of courage to defy the cultural norms. And it takes a lot of education just to get to the stage of beginning to question those cultural norms and seek out information from unbiased sources. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. email: [log in to unmask] Anthropology Department phone: (409) 845-5256 Texas A&M University fax: (409) 845-4070 College Station, TX 77843-4352