Today Babies and more interview with anthropologist Kathy Dettwyler, an eminence worldwide regarding the cultural, anthropological and ethological aspects of human breastfeeding. From what we have been able to find out is the first interview that Dr. Dettwyler, currently a professor at the University of Delaware, gives for a Spanish medium.
The special relevance at the general level of Dr. Dettwyler is that she has been the largest researcher and disseminator on the natural duration of breastfeeding in humans, her conclusions being published in works such as: "Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives" and many other publications that we can find referenced on your page.
We will begin to walk the path of your research from your hand until you reach your conclusions sip the natural duration of breastfeeding in humans.
Dr. Dettwyler, what made you interested in breastfeeding as an anthropologist researcher?
I was already studying at the faculty in 1979 in the biological anthropology section and was very interested in the interactions between human growth, health and cultural beliefs and practices, when I became pregnant with my first child. It was my daughter, Miranda, who is now 32 years old. Initially I had planned to do my research for the thesis in the center of Sudan (the Nuba mountains of Kordofan) and focus on the relationship between children's diet and physical activity and their growth and development. However, my husband (at that time also an anthropology student) and I encountered logistics problems to travel to Sudan and in the end we ended up in Mali, where we had American friends who were also anthropologists.
And did the field of your research change?
Yes. I modified my research plans to study the influence of artificial on the growth of children, since I had already participated in the boycott against Nestle for several years.
But, in the end, the research of his thesis dealt with breastfeeding, not artificial breastfeeding, right?
It turned out that almost no one used artificial milk in Mali. So again I altered my research plans to focus on the general ethnography of beliefs and practices related to breastfeeding and weaning on the one hand, and with the growth and health of children as the outcome variable. I was breastfeeding my daughter Miranda for almost the entire time I lived in Mali doing my research for my thesis. I followed up more than 100 children, visiting them once a month for 2 years, pointing out their diets, their health and their growth. I also interviewed mothers asking them about their beliefs about the diet and health of children, including breastfeeding guidelines and when to add solid food, and then when they weaned, especially referring to when breastfeeding stopped.
Were there other previous research on this particular topic?
Yes, the anthropologists had done some research on breastfeeding before finishing my work, but there was not much previous work. Dana Raphael, a student of Margaret Mead, had completed the first doctoral thesis of anthropology on breastfeeding. During the early 1980s, when I did my job in Mali, certain culture and biology anthropologists also researched breastfeeding in various regions of the world. In 1985-86, four books on this subject were published: "Breastfeeding, child health and birth spacing: cross-cultural perspectives", edited by Valerie Hull and Mayling Simpson (1985), "Childcare and feeding in the South Pacific area" , edited by Leslie Marshall (1985), "Only mothers know: patterns of infant feeding in traditional cultures", by Dana Raphael and Flora Davis (1985), and "The triad of infant feeding: baby, mother and family", by Barry M. Popkin, Tamar Lasky, Judith Litvin, Deborah Spicer and Monica E. Yamamoto (1986). These books were published after finishing my thesis. A few years later, Patricia Stuart-Macadam and I were chatting at an anthropology congress, while we were breastfeeding our babies, and decided to edit together a book on breastfeeding and anthropology.
What work is this and what contributions does it imply?
This book is "Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives" published in 1995. I planned to write a chapter on beliefs and practices that influence breastfeeding in the US (compared to Mali and other sites), and this was my chapter called "Beauty and the beast".
But, it also talks about the natural age of weaning, right?
He had also planned to examine recommendations on weaning, hoping to clarify how old it would be "natural" for humans to leave the chest, such as mammals, primates and great apes. I expected to find questions and answers to the topic in several ways, as there were various recommendations circulating: "It is natural to wean human babies at 9 months" or "at 12 months" etc. So my second chapter of the book, "Moment to wean", became a summary of my own research trying to discover when we could wean humans (stop breastfeeding in general) if we did not have the cultural beliefs that forced us and influenced our decisions.To my surprise I discovered that no one had asked the question scientifically. People basically only made these recommendations about the age of weaning based on their own cultural beliefs, not scientific studies.
Could you briefly explain your conclusions about the natural duration of human breastfeeding?
To answer this great question, I began by analyzing the previous studies that had been done on nonhuman primates (prosimians, monkeys and apes) and that correlated the age of weaning with the history of other vital variables such as gestation duration, size at birth, growth rates, timing of teething eruption, age of reproductive maturity, adult size etc. We assume that nonhuman primates have no references of cultural beliefs when weaning. That is, a chimpanzee does not tell another "Seriously, you should wean your baby now, it is too old to breastfeed!"
That is, weaning is cultural, but also responds to aspects of natural life history.
Yes. We also know that many variables in life history are not susceptible to changing at the whim of maternal cultural beliefs. For example, the duration of pregnancy is mainly under genetic control and varies only within very narrow limits in humans. Also the teething guidelines do not change easily. A mother cannot simply say "I want my baby to have her teeth early, or late" and that this happens in this way. So I analyzed different variables of life history in nonhuman primates, especially those that correlated closely with age at weaning (and with which one could predict the time at which the young were weaned) and then calculated what could be predict with the same variables of vital history in humans about the human age of weaning.
And what were the final results?
It is a very wide margin, from 2.5 to 7 years, but it fits with the notion of the adaptability of humans who live in a variety of environments, and who have cultural beliefs and practices that affect their diet and health. For example, a nine-month gestation, as is typical for humans, predicts about 4.5 years of breastfeeding. Reaching reproductive maturity between 12 and 20 years predicts a weaning age starting with 3 years until after 6 years. Most primates wean their young when they begin the teething process and the first permanent molars come out. Permanent molars leave after baby teeth, between 5.5 and 6.5 years in most humans. So my research did not conclude that a specific age was the optimum or ideal for breastfeeding a human baby, but rather that at some time between 2.5 and 7 years is the natural range of ages to wean in modern humans if the people do not mess with the process and spoil it due to their local cultural beliefs.The results, depending on the life history variable I used, ranged from 2.5 years of breastfeeding at least in humans, up to 7 years at the most.
And you know, my experience is that Dr. Dettwiler had and is absolutely right. Not surprisingly, after reading it, I decided not to interfere with the duration of my child's breastfeeding and it has been over six years.
To carry out this interview we have had the help of Professor Miriam ben Taher and the translator Sorina Oprean, to whom we are very grateful. In the second part of this interview of Babies and more to the anthropologist Kathy Dettwyler We will continue to deepen the natural duration of human breastfeeding and the cultural aspects that surround it.
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