To think that "97% of women can breastfeed" is a load of crap

When you say Also a paediatrician had a go at me when he was 6 years old and said I should have tried harder

what did he actually say if you’re being totally honest @elliejjtiny ?

You clearly have some trauma from not being able to breastfeed, please deal with that rather than bashing others. Many mums could breastfeed if they have more support, that's undeniable.

Sorry DM wouldn't describe it as very difficult. FWIW I think being around lots of women who breast feed.

I don't think so. DM breast fed 3 babies we all slept through around 3 or 4 months, she would describe it as very difficult as a child I saw all my aunties breast feed, my sister and I both fed 2 babies each, again not very difficult. Mine were going 7 or 8 hours by 12 weeks. I accept it is very difficult for some women but honselty for most of the women I know well it wasn't.

So there would have been plenty of breastfeeding mothers in many communities who could have acted as wet nurses.

I’m in this group - who knows whether I could have breastfed, I never tried. Is it 97% of those who tried?

Same here. Maybe 97% can, but there’s still sadly the 3% of us.

Precisely @Shallotsaresmallonions.

From what I've read, the average weaning age would have been much higher, around 4-7, and breast milk would've made up a larger percentage of a child's calorie intake for much longer so would've extended the postpartum amenorrhea.

So a woman's period may have come back when her child was 2 and then a few months to get pregnant, makes for a gap of 3+ years.

Google is your friend here @Pikachu150.

Okay. I perhaps should have said infant and child mortality as I didn't just mean those that were breast fed.

Because they would not be breastfeeding a child, their cycle would come back sooner and they would be able to get pregnant again.

What evidence is there of the average gap in pregnancies and why would infant/child mortality reduce the average gap between pregnancies?

@Pikachu150 infant mortality would reduce the average natural gaps between pregancies and so bring the average gap down, so given that all the research that has been done on this suggests that average gap is 3-4 years, that would actually imply a longer gap between babies in the absence of infant mortality, not a shorter one as you seem to be arguing (on the basis of no evidence whatsoever).

Your original claim was that women historically had babies every year, and that’s just not the case.

Those mothers may have breastfed other babies though.

No it isn't.

If you even say, "I think women should make an effort to breastfeed," the formula mums age even most of the breastfeeding mums go mad. Even sharing factual information about the benefits of breast milk gets people screaming that they're being "shamed".

It's completely socially acceptable to say that you should make an effort to reduce screentime and give your children a healthy diet.

It's not realistic to say zero screens and zero UPFs for most people because unlike a 6 month old baby, older children have their own interests, wishes and opinions. A newborn baby eats what it's given and doesn't complain, a 7 yo will feel completely left out at school if they can't eat the same food or talk about the same TV shows as any of their friends. You have to exert an unhealthy level of control over a child to prevent them from ever eating UPFs or non-organic food and that doesn't teach them a healthy relationship with food.

What you're saying is that the attitude to encouraging breastfeeding is the same as saying, "You're a bad parent if your children ever have any screentime of UPF food," but I've never seen anyone say, "You're a bad parent if your child ever has a drop of formula, regardless of how many struggles you had with breastfeeding."

I think the other poster is talking about gap between pregnancy rather than size of family. Infant mortality has nothing to do with the former - except that you might expect it to shorten the window in some cases as if the baby sadly died very young then there would be no breastfeeding.

So you think infant mortality had nothing to do with the fact that families weren't particularly large on average and that it was all down to breastfeeding.

I’m not. I’m simply pointing out the hypocrisy. It’s apparently only ok to bully and shame women in to the breast feeding parenting choice and not others- when breast feeding has one of the smallest impacts!

Those pushing breast feeding don’t like it when their choices are questioned! You don’t like others telling you what you can and should be doing when making a choice so who are you to do that to other mothers as regards breast feeding?

Ok fair enough/

Look, you’re weighing in mid thread without having read the previous relevant messages between me and the poster I was responding to, so you’re getting the wrong end of the stick.

That poster said that historically women had babies every year and that’s why there were loads of wet nurses around. My response was that for 95% of human history the natural spacing for childbirth was 3-4 years because - as you say (and as I said) nutrition standards were different as were feeding patterns. Smaller age gaps (of 1 year or less) didn’t start to exist until breastmilk substitutes started to be used.

Nowadays yes, bf is not recommended as a contraceptive, but that has nothing to do with the point I was making.

But it it’s actually about food supply then any increase in the woman’s physiological needs would have an equally contraceptive effect: it’s like saying that doing sports acts as a contraceptive because some women find their periods stop. That doesn’t make sport a contraceptive all the same.

I just feel it’s so unrelated to our lives today that it’s almost become an urban myth. Breast feeding is not a reliable contraceptive and women shouldn’t be led to think it might be.

Of course I know it doesn’t apply now - the context of the conversation was the situation historically.