Just as a decade ago seeing a child of 2 or more years breastfeed was relatively strange (people were quite hallucinated when they saw Miriam, my wife, breastfeed Jon at that age), today it is still a controversial practice , but more and more normalized, especially since more and more people know that it is recommended that a child be breastfeeding up to 2 years or more .
What happens now is that many children are exceeding that number comfortably and it is not difficult to see children aged 3 and over stop what they are doing for a little while, get closer to mom, suckle for a moment and go about their business. 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 assert that the child no longer contributes anything at a nutritional level and there are those who believe that it is negative because it could cause the child’s dependence on the mother, or even problems psychological. How long to breastfeed the baby? To answer this, we are going to see what the natural age of weaning is .
Sexual connotations?
I will stop for the moment at this point, although I don’t want to give it much encouragement either because I don’t think it deserves it. When a mother breastfeeds her newborn baby there is no sexual connotation . She is feeding him and relating to him in the most natural way that exists, offering him the breast as mammalian animals do: to give food, warmth, comfort, love, shelter, etc.
If we are talking about a boy or girl of, say, 6 or 7 years old, who continues to breastfeed, all we say is that it is a child who has been nursing since he was a baby, who simply continues to relate in that way with his mother. Just as there was no sexual connotation in the first days of life, there is not when the child is that age, because for both the child and the mother it is such a normal and habitual way of relating that it no longer attends to any more reasons.
That is, when a woman breastfeeds a child of that age, she no longer does so because she considers it the best food, nor does she do it because of her defenses, or because she has been told that she will be smarter that way, or because of any of the benefits. that people explain about breastfeeding; She does it because she has done it that way from the beginning , because it is a way of being with her child that lasts over time, like someone who tells a story to her baby every night and continues to do so when she is 7 years old, like someone every night She sings a lullaby to her baby and continues until the child tells the mother that it is no longer needed.
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 believe that behind that moment there is some type of abuse or sexual desire towards each other.
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. For some time now, what has been heard the most 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 no matter how old a child is. What’s more, the older it is, the more fat it contains and the higher the amount of calories it provides .
The main organizations in terms of health say that it is recommended that a baby be exclusively breastfed until 6 months of age, that from that moment breastfeeding is supplemented with food until 12 months of age and that between 12 and at 24 months, breast milk is one more food within all that a child can eat. From the age of 2, it is said that the baby can continue to be breastfed until the mother or he decides to leave it .
It follows from this that there is no deadline. An age is not established after which it is considered that breast milk no longer contributes anything to the child or is negative, so on a nutritional level there is no reason to leave it .
The Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP), in fact, published a report a few months ago to talk about it. Quoting an excerpt from that report:
Breast milk does not lose its properties over time. From the first year of lactation, the amount of fat in milk increases with respect to the first months, resulting in a complete and nutritious food for an older infant and of higher quality than formula or cow’s milk. It has been seen that a breastfed baby over one year of age obtains approximately 1/3 of its daily caloric and protein needs through breast milk (sometimes more, especially during periods of illness), in addition to a very significant amount On the other hand, older children who breastfeed continue to enjoy the immune benefits of breast milk, with a lower incidence of infections for their age than their peers who are not breastfed. 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 exclusive breastfeeding, an effect that lasts for years and that it can even lead to a higher level of education and income in adult life.
But in children of more than 5 years, what sense does it make?
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 5 or 6 years old when they hardly get sick like when they were babies, what does it add to them? Because many people always ask themselves this question and defend it with the following argument: “It is probably that it hardly helps them anymore, and as food it is dispensable in a balanced diet.”
Well, they are right. If we talk about children from five years of age onwards, it is very likely that at the level of defenses the help is no longer so necessary, and that at the nutritional level, breast milk is an expendable food. But that it is expendable does not mean that it is worse than the others, because dispensable are actually all foods .
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 more two foods and the rest of the diet is healthy, the child will not have any deficiency, so it could be said that there is no essential food per se . However, if the child likes the egg, why take it away? And if you like apples, why not give it to him? Just because you can live without them?
What’s more, there are other dispensable foods that do not generate as much controversy as human milk: cookies, French fries, chocolate, cocoa cream, candies, carbonated soft drinks, pastries, juices and smoothies, mega-sugar milk with cocoa … and this is being eaten by the children of the world every day and it seems that it does not generate so much conflict.
Come on, breast milk is the most nutritious food that exists, more than any other food, and mind you, 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, you don’t have to. Better get on with it.
Breastfeeding in older children, doesn’t it generate dependency?
It doesn’t have to. In the AEP report we read the following. Brief but very clarifying:
No physical or psychological risks have been found in children who breastfeed over 2-3 years of age (…) The duration of breastfeeding is also involved in a better emotional and psychosocial development of the child. The longer the duration, a lower incidence of child abuse, a better relationship with parents in adolescence, a greater perception of care and better mental health in adult life have been described. Emotional benefits have also been observed in adopted children from a difficult environment who underwent induced breastfeeding.
Almost 20 years ago (in 1997), Lawrence Gartner , chair of the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) breastfeeding task force, explained in a statement on breastfeeding older children, that:
The Academy has not set a limit (for breastfeeding). There are children who are breastfed until they are 4, 5 or 6 years old. This may be rare, but not harmful.
If, as I explained at the beginning, breastfeeding has always been the normal and natural way for the child and the mother to relate to each other, it is usual for the child to stop breastfeeding over time, and less and less happens. This is so because as a child grows and acquires new tools of social relationship and emotional control, the dependence on the mother is diluted . When he is hungry he can eat anything else if he wants, when he is afraid he is much more rational and does not have to run for Mom’s breast, and when he hurts, the same. The child (or girl) gets older, has more adaptive resources and naturally “weans” off the mother, leaving the feedings for the moments when he and mother simply want to be together for a while .
And then what is the natural age of weaning?
So much talk and I have not yet explained the natural age of weaning. I have left it for last with all the intention in 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 correct to breastfeed a five-year-old today because it was done that way thousands of years ago? Life has changed, societies have evolved, we have incorporated into our day-to-day customs that were not known for millennia … hospitable handwashing, without going any further, did not begin to be considered necessary until the 19th century. Before that, no one washed them to care for a sick person and people died from easily preventable infections.
Well, of everything that our predecessors did millennia ago, surely we no longer do even half of the things, so although the argument of “children were breastfed until they were how many years” serves many people, it does not say anything to me currently. It seems curious to me, but nothing more, because the arguments that I have explained above have, in my opinion, much more weight.
Anyway, you have come this far because you want to know, so I continue. A few years ago we spoke in Babies and more with one of the people who has studied the most on this subject, the anthropologist Kathy Dettwyler , who explained to us that the natural age of weaning ranges from 2 and a half years to 7 years .
But Dettwyler’s theory, based on the study of non-human primates, is not the only one in this regard, so we could say, based on studies on this subject, that the natural weaning age is based on the following three theories:
- When the child acquires four times his weight at birth (approximately 2.5 years).
- When the age of the child is six times the length of gestation (4.5 years).
- When the first molar appears (at 6 years).
From all of them we deduce that natural weaning, when the child is not urged to quit, ranges from 2.5 years to 6 years, and adding Dettwyler’s theory, up to 7.5 years . But these are current theories about something that was done millennia ago, based on the life that was led back 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 have to be studied 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 is nursing many years, and its desires, its intentions, its nature could be contaminated by derogatory comments from other children and adults.
That is why I insist on what I have just said: knowing the natural age of weaning of children who lived thousands of years ago contributes little. What we need to know we already know: milk is still the best possible food and does not cause dependency or psychological problems in children . So the next thing, what we need, what we need is RESPECT . Because in the end this whole issue will 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 health professional, family member, friend or stranger) should have an opinion.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | Why is breastfeeding recommended for up to two years or more? Does it make sense to talk about prolonged breastfeeding? Breastfeeding without an expiration date: until the mother or child decides
