Just as a decade ago seeing a child of 2 or more years having a tit was relatively strange (people hallucinated quite a lot when they saw Miriam, my wife, breastfeed Jon at that age), today it is still a controversial practice , but increasingly normalized, especially since more and more people know that it is advisable for a child to be breastfeeding up to 2 years or more.
What happens now is that many children are exceeding that figure comfortably and it is not difficult to see children aged 3 or more leave a moment what they are doing, approaching mom, breastfeed for a moment and follow their own. Even older children, over 5-6 years old who still breastfeed sometimes at home.
This generates debate because there are those who consider it inappropriate because they see sexual connotations, there are those who claim that the child does not contribute anything at the nutritional level and there are those who believe that it is negative because it could cause dependence on the child towards the mother, or even problems Psychological How long to breastfeed the baby? To answer this we will see what is the natural age of weaning.
Sexual connotations?
I stop at the moment at this point, although I don't want to give it a lot of people either because I don't think it deserves it. When a mother breastfeeds her newborn baby there is no sexual connotation. He is feeding him and interacting with him in the most natural way that exists, offering him the breast as mammals do: to feed, heat, comfort, love, shelter, etc.
In Babies and moreThe night weaning, nine tips to do it respectfullyIf we talk about a boy or girl, say, 6 or 7 years old, who is still breastfeeding, all we say is that it is a boy who does it since he was a baby, who simply continues to be related in that way to his mother. Just as there was no sexual connotation in his first days of life, there is none when the child is that age, because for both the child and the mother it is a way of relating so normal and habitual, that it no longer serves any other reason.
That is, when a woman breastfeeds a child of that age, she no longer does it because she considers it to be the best food, nor does she do it because of her defenses, nor because she has been told that she will be smarter or for any of the benefits that people explain about breastfeeding; it does because he has done so from the beginning, because it is a way of being with your child that lasts in time, like who every night tells a story to your baby and keeps doing it when he is 7 years old, like who every night sings a babysitter to his baby and follows him doing until the child tells the mother that it is no longer necessary.
It is just one more detail, an intimate moment of the two, which is the same as they have always had: a routine, a hug between mother and son, an excuse like any other to be together. That is why it is absurd to speak of vice and an insult to make people believe that behind that moment there is some kind of sexual abuse or desire of one another.
Is breast milk still a nutritious food?
A few years ago it was said that after six months, breast milk no longer made sense because it was already like water. What has been heard for a while now is that this strange phenomenon of transformation of milk into water happens at 12 months. And yet both are false. Breast milk is still a nutritious food if the child is how old he is. What's more, the older it is, more fat contains and greater is the amount of calories it provides.
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The main agencies in terms of health say that it is recommended that a baby be exclusively breastfed until 6 months of age, that from that moment on, breastfeeding is complemented with food until 12 months of age and that between 12 and 24 months breast milk is another food in all that a child can eat. From 2 years old it is said that the baby can continue to be breastfed until the mother or he decides to leave it.
It follows that there is no deadline. An age is not established from which it is considered that breast milk no longer contributes anything to the child or is negative, so at the nutritional level there is no reason to leave it.
The Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP), in fact, published a few months ago a report to talk about it. Citing an excerpt from that report:
Breast milk does not lose its properties over time. From the first year of breastfeeding, the amount of fat in the milk increases with respect to the first months, resulting in a complete and nutritious food for an older and higher quality infant than formula or cow's milk. It has been seen that a baby older than one year old who is breastfeeding gets approximately 1/3 of his daily caloric and protein needs through breast milk (sometimes more, especially during periods of illness), in addition to a very significant amount of vitamins and minerals. On the other hand, older children who breastfeed continue to enjoy the immunological benefits of breast milk, with a lower incidence of infections for their age than their non-breastfed peers. The advantages of maintaining breastfeeding longer are not only observed in the short term, but years after weaning. There has been a lower incidence of certain types of cancer (such as childhood leukemia, metabolic and autoimmune diseases (such as type 1 diabetes) and greater intellectual development over time and exclusivity of breastfeeding, an effect that remains for years and that It can even lead to a higher level of education and economic income in adult life.
But in children over 5 years, what is the point?
The AEP says that breast milk provides defenses to children and that is why it is positive that children continue to breastfeed after 2 years. But when the immune system is already quite mature, at that age from the age of 5 or 6 when they are barely ill like when they were babies, what does it bring? Because many people always ask themselves this question and defend it with the following argument: "It is that it probably won't help him anymore, and as food it is expendable within a balanced diet."
Well, they are right. If we talk about children five years old and older, it is very likely that at the level of defenses help is no longer so necessary, and that at the nutritional level, breast milk is a dispensable food. But that it is dispensable does not mean that it is worse than the others, because expendable are actually all foods.
In Babies and more The AEP publishes a report in favor of breastfeeding in older children (yes, those who already walk and run)Cow's milk is dispensable (and more if a child can drink human milk), eggs, apples, celery, broccoli, yogurt, lentils, potatoes, bread are dispensable ... If we remove one or two foods and the rest of the diet is healthy, the child will not be lacking, so you could say that there is no essential food per se. However, if the child likes the egg, why take it away? And if he likes apples, why not give him? Just because you can live without them?
Moreover, there are other foods that are also expendable that do not generate as much controversy as human milk: cookies, chips, chocolate, cocoa cream, candies, carbonated soft drinks, pastries, juices and smoothies, milk with cocoa megaazucarada ... and this is what the children of the world are eating every day and it seems that it doesn't generate so much conflict.
Come on, that breast milk is the most nutritious food that exists, more than any other food, and notice, for a child who takes it instead of all the junk food they sell in supermarkets it turns out that he should leave it because it is "expendable ". Well, no, I don't have to. Better keep it up.
Does breastfeeding in older children not generate dependency?
It doesn't have to. In the AEP report we read the following. Brief but very clarifying:
There have been no physical or psychological risks in children who breastfeed above 2-3 years of age (...) The duration of breastfeeding is also involved in a better emotional and psychosocial development of the child. At a longer duration, a lower incidence of child abuse, a better relationship with parents in adolescence, a greater perception of care and a better mental health in adult life have been described. Emotional benefits have also been observed in adopted children from a difficult environment in which induced breastfeeding was performed.
Almost 20 years ago (in 1997), Lawrence Gartner, president of the breastfeeding working group of the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) explained in a statement about breastfeeding in older children, that:
The Academy has not set a limit (for breastfeeding). There are children who are breastfed until 4, 5 or 6 years. This may be rare, but not harmful.
If, as I explained at the beginning, breastfeeding is the normal and natural way of relating the child and the mother forever, it is usual for the child to stop breastfeeding over time, and less and less. This is so because as a child grows and acquires new tools of social relationship and emotional control, dependence on the mother is diluted. When you are hungry you can eat anything else if you want, when you feel fear it is much more rational and you do not have to run for mom's tit, and when you hurt yourself, the same. The child (or girl) gets older, has more adaptive resources and in a natural way is "weaned" from the mother, leaving the shots for the moments when mom and he just want to be together for a while.
And then, what is the natural age of weaning?
Both talk and I have not yet explained about the natural age of weaning. I have left it for the end with all the intention of the world because I wanted to give weight to all the arguments that serve to defend breastfeeding in older children without having to use this, which is more anachronistic. What is the point of saying that it is right to breastfeed a five-year-old child today because thousands of years ago it was like this? Life has changed, societies have evolved, we have incorporated into our day-to-day customs that were not known for millennia ... hospital hand washing, without going any further, did not begin to be considered necessary until the 19th century. Before that nobody washed them to treat a sick person and people died from easily preventable infections.
For everything that our ancestors did millennia ago for sure that we do not do even half of the things, so although the argument of "children were breastfed until how many years" serves many people, it does not tell me anything nowadays. I find it curious, but nothing more, because the arguments I have explained above have, in my opinion, much more weight.
Anyway, you got here because you want to know, so I continue. A few years ago we talked in Babies and more with one of the people who has studied the most on this subject, the anthropologist Kathy Dettwyler, who explained that the natural age of weaning goes from 2 and a half years to 7 years.
But Dettwyler's theory, based on the study of nonhuman primates, is not the only one in this regard, so we could say, based on studies on this subject, that the age of natural weaning is based on the following three theories:
- When the child acquires four times his birth weight (approximately 2.5 years).
- When the child's age is six times the length of gestation (4.5 years).
- When the first molar appears (at 6 years old).
From all of them we deduce that natural weaning, when the child is not urged to leave, goes from 2.5 years to 6 years, and adding Dettwyler's theory, to 7.5 years. But these are current theories about something that was done millennia ago, based on the life that was taken by then.
What is the natural age of weaning today in the western world? This is the key question. And I answer: it is not known. No, because most children do not have a natural weaning. It would be necessary to study it and we would not know very well how to discriminate the nature of the data, taking into account that we live in a society that does not see well that a child sucks many years, and his desires, his intentions, his nature, could be contaminated by the derogatory comments from other children and adults.
That is why I insist on what I just said: knowing what the natural age of weaning of children who lived thousands of years ago brings little. What we need to know we already know: milk is still the best possible food Y does not cause dependency or psychological problems in children. So the next thing, what we need, what it takes is RESPECT. Because in the end this whole issue is going to stop there. In respect for an option that is normal, that is natural and that is part of the intimacy of a mother and her children, about which no one (no healthcare professional, family member, friend or stranger) should comment.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | Why breastfeeding is recommended until two years or more, Does it make sense to talk about prolonged breastfeeding ?, Breastfeeding without expiration date: until mother or child decide
