Old Enough To Ask

My high school best friend called me up after my last post about nursing.  "I agree with 99% of what you said," she told me.  The one percent?  Joe's getting pretty big to be nursing in public.  He's two.  How old is too old?

I remember walking from the train to work one day with my boss, my first year out of college.  For some reason she was talking about friends of hers whose daughters nursed until they were three or four years old.  In her estimation this bordered on child abuse.  "If they're old enough to ask," she announced, "they're too old."

Here's the thing, though:  they're born asking.  Within days of my oldest child's birth I knew just when he was saying he needed to nurse -- he would turn his head toward me and snuffle in a distinctive way.  With the younger two, who did not have the bleeps and warbles of NICU equipment interfering with their earliest communication efforts, I could tell within hours when they were saying, "Nurse me, please."  The asking takes different forms as they get bigger, but where, I'd like to ask my former boss, would you draw the line?  For Alex the snuffling turned into diving which became reaching toward me with a grin of anticipation and then his "ah-ah-ah" turned into "nana."  "Nana" became "nuss" and by the time he weaned he would ask "Can I please n-u-r-s-e?" which never failed to make me laugh.

Some of you, far from laughing, are horrified at the idea of nursing a child able to spell.  So before I get into the reasons why I have nursed my children past infancy (and into early literacy), let me make it clear that I am not on a soapbox here.  I find the empirical and experiential evidence in favor of long-term nursing to be persuasive.  You may not.  You're welcome to your opinion, and I would never presume to tell you what to do in your own family.  My aim here is to offer you a glimpse of life in our family, where nursing is more than just nutrition, and to explain why we do what we do. 

To begin with, there's the science in favor of long-term breastfeeding.  The anthropologist Kathy Dettwyler researched weaning ages in other mammals, particularly other hominids, to see what might emerge as a natural age of weaning for humans.  She looked at a number of factors:  age at immune system maturation, age at which permanent teeth erupt, age at which birthweight quadruples, and some others I can't remember that are spelled out in her book Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives.  She found that the evidence unconditionally supported long-term breastfeeding.  More specifically, she says that the range of natural weaning ages falls between 2.5 and 7 years. 

Both archaeological and anthropological data support Dettwyler's contention.  Last year the New York Times reported on weaning ages in ancient Egypt:  scientists determined that the Egyptian children they studied nursed until about age three.  In the Bible, the deuterocanonical book of 2 Maccabees also talks about nursing until age three.  In many of the Maria Lactans paintings, the Child in Mary's lap is clearly past infancy.  Only in the developed world, where replacement foods are available, affordable, and relatively safe, can we measure the duration of breastfeeding in weeks rather than years without widespread serious consequences to children.  We have to ask ourselves:  just because children can wean early in our part of the world, does that mean they should?

I haven't made my choices about breastfeeding because of archaeological data; my reasons have mostly been practical. Nursing is the 17-blade Swiss Army knife in my mothering toolkit.  It is a versatile and mutually agreeable way to deal with a host of problems.  Hungry? Thirsty? Tired? Sick? Teething? Bored? Hurt? Sad? Frustated? Having a nightmare? Having a tantrum? Having a hard day?  Climb up in my lap and nurse, and know that things are going to be okay.  Of course I have many other tools to choose from -- I'd be a lousy carpenter if I only had a Swiss Army knife -- but none as flexible or as well-loved as nursing.  (Totally unrelated to toddler nursing:  did you know you can buy a Swiss Army knife with an attached USB memory key?  You can also buy one without the knife blades for air travel.  At first I thought it had to be a joke, but apparently it's not.  That's one of those things I'd be hard-pressed to explain to a person from 40 years ago -- a knifeless knife case capable of holding what used to be a roomful of data.  But I digress.)

So why, if toddler nursing is a magic cure for toddler ills, do people find it objectionable?  I think the first reason is the degree to which breasts are sexualized in this culture.  For some people it's as if a nursing mother is performing a sex act with her child, and it can only be acceptable if he's too small to understand.  A child old enough to reason and remember -- now that's disgraceful.  This logic is faulty for two reasons, the first being that breasts are not inherently sexual (see previous post on nursing, esp. the bit about overlay functions).  I also think that if something is morally iffy for a mother to do with a child, it's worse if the child is too small and vulnerable to have language and long-term memory.  But there is not an iota of evidence to suggest that long-term nursing causes harm -- not to a child's developing sexual identity and not in any other domain -- and there is ample research in support of the practice.

Another factor militating against long-term breastfeeding in this culture is the way Americans prize independence.  How early can they sleep through the night in their own rooms?  How early can they go to preschool?  In many eyes, toddler nursing equals inappropriate dependence -- it's like a six-year-old in diapers.  In my view, small children are naturally needy and nursing is one good way to meet those needs.  If you opt not to nurse beyond the first year, you'll need to find another way to deal with stomach viruses, picky eating, night waking, and tantrums.  Weaning won't eliminate any of those things.  And not many of the alternative approaches allow you to read The New Yorker simultaneously the way nursing does. 

I do my best not to infantilize my children; I expect them to contribute as much as they can to household happiness and efficiency.  Around here four-year-olds put away clean dishes and folded laundry.  They make their beds in the morning and pick up their toys at night with a little help.  They clean the bathroom sink while someone bigger cleans the toilet.  Four-year-olds here are expected to respond politely if they're served food they don't like, and to ask for what they need without whining.  At the same time I also recognize that four-year-olds are much closer to babyhood than to adulthood.  It's fine with me if my sons want to nurse at age four.  It works for our family.  It works well.

Can nursing be misused?  Sure -- anything can be misused.  Are there creepy mothers out there, breastfeeding their children inappropriately?  There might be a few.  I have known dozens of older nurslings and their mothers, none of whom ever set off my "something's weird here" radar, but I acknowledge that the possibility exists.  In the US today, though, we have a definition of normal nursing behavior that conflicts with what was considered normal for most of human history.  I am not persuaded that the current US majority view rests on anything other than formula company marketing strategies.  I respectfully suggest that people who object to long-term nursing reconsider their objections -- not because everyone ought to do things the way we do, but because nursing families should be free to make their own decisions about what works for them.

In lieu of artificial cutoffs for "appropriate" weaning ages, I propose that we view weaning as we view learning the /l/ sound.  A few kids learn to say /l/ very early in the game, just as a few cue-fed babies will wean in the first year.  No one thinks it's weird to hear a four-year-old say, "Yook at the yion!" -- similarly, in my ideal world no one would think it odd for a four-year-old to nurse.  A first-grader who is still talking about "yazy yeopards" is on the older end of the spectrum, but not extraordinary.  Some kids need more help than others to get their /l/ nailed down, and some keep nursing more enthusiastically than others.  But who can tell, listening to a roomful of normal eighth-graders talking, which ones figured out /l/ at two and which ones didn't get it until age seven?

When my oldest child was born I was surprised to see how many people came up to us and said things like, "I wish somebody'd carry me around like that."  I never said what I really thought, which was, "Well, you see, the reason I'm carrying him around is that he can't walk.  Personally, I'd rather be ambulatory."  There is a misperception that childhood is nothing but easy -- a carefree time to kick back in the sandbox and play to your heart's content.  While I hope my children remember childhood as carefree, it certainly has its difficulties.  They hear "no" so often:  no, you must not be unkind to your brother; no, you may not jump off the radiator; no, Nutella from a spoon is not a nutritious lunch.

Nursing my children past infancy is one way that I can offer a consistent yes in a world full of no.  Yes, it's frustrating when your Lego castle falls over -- would you like to nurse and try again in fifteen minutes?  Yes, nightmares are awful -- you can nurse and fall asleep here next to me.  Yes, I will be a safe place for you.  Yes, it's okay to nurse until you're ready to wean.

When my oldest son was three I was frustrated with his continued nursing.  One day I said to him, "You know, you could pick a special toy to be a weaning present if you wanted."  His face fell and he said, "I would rather have nana than any toy."  I asked him, "What is it that you love so much about nursing?  Is it the milk?  Is it the closeness?  Why is it so important to you?"  He said sadly, "It's just -- it's just everything."

I decided that I was better equipped to deal with my frustrations than he was, and he kept nursing.  (Which is not to say you should just suck it up if you're unhappy in your nursing relationship.)  The next year he weaned peacefully.  It was a lesson to me in many ways.  It taught me not to be so dramatic about things that are bothering me as a mother.  (Mama-drama may rhyme, but it is far from poetic.)  It reminded me that kids do grow up, in their own time.  And most important:  it showed me conclusively that "old enough to ask" doesn't mean too old to nurse.