What is the Normal Amount of Time to Breastfeed?
Common does not equal normal
Parts of the internet have been ablaze this week after British designer Karen Millen went on Vanessa Feltz’s Channel 5 chat show Vanessa, and said, “There’s no benefit, is there, for a child to be breastfed beyond six months, really, I think it’s quite selfish on the mother’s part… it’s an addiction… it’s not normal… I find it very weird.”
First of all, as someone who has been accused of “shaming” mothers when I have reported on the facts about breast milk and breastfeeding, the language Millen uses to describe mothers who breastfeed for longer than six months is the very definition of shaming: “weird, not normal, selfish.” (She has since issued an apology).
Unfortunately, these sentiments are quite common in Western, modern cultures which have a deeply disturbed relationship to breastfeeding — otherwise known as mammalian lactation — the foundational evolutionary aspect of our species.
To clarify, most anthropologists agree that the biologically normal amount of time to breastfeed is roughly three years, with some cultures going until age seven or longer.
Yet most babies in the industrialized world don’t get this most fundamental first food even for the first six months of their lives. Only 24 percent of infants in the U.S. and one percent of infants in the U.K. are exclusively breastfed at six months despite recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and The World Health Organization for six months as a minimum. Both agencies recommend breastfeeding for at least two years, if possible.
Yes, you read that right; only one percent of infants in the U.K. are exclusively breastfed at six months! If anything’s not normal, it’s that.
I’ll be writing much more about the astounding benefits of breastfeeding for the biologically normal amount of time soon (and you can see my previous post for more details on the components of breast milk) but in the meantime, here are some of those benefits:
Lowering your baby’s risk for ear, nose, throat, and sinus infections in infancy and beyond
Protecting against autoimmune disease and respiratory allergies
Lowering your baby’s risk for obesity and diabetes
Protecting against dental malocclusions
Higher intelligence scores compared to shorter breastfeeding durations or no breastfeeding at all
Preventing childhood leukemia by as much as 20 percent; and the longer the duration of breastfeeding the greater the protection
For mothers, breastfeeding lowers the risk of breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers, and reduces the risk of diabetes and high blood pressure
Breastfeeding also provides closeness through skin-to-skin contact which improves infants’ vital signs, enhancing the overall bonding experience between mother and child
I find it remarkable (infuriating?) that so many people in the Western world now need convincing that feeding a baby the first substance it has been designed to consume for its first several years of life is, in fact, normal. Yet here we are.
I spent a total of 14 years breastfeeding across 3 children. This is of course not something I can put on a CV, I don’t wish to make others feel less than esp if they are unable to breadtfeed for whatever reason, and my eldest is now in his twenties so it is some time ago = I never talk about this topic any longer. But it is one of the things I am most proud to have done.
One thing that new mothers are not prepared for though is that for the first week after birth, feeding can be extremely painful for the mum before the child learns to latch properly. This phase *passes* within about a week and stamina can be everything.
As far as I know, that’s quite normal, and yet it’s never ever depicted in stories about motherhood! So it can come as a complete shock to new mothers. Maybe this is part of the reason why breastfeeding doesn’t work out for a lot of people.