Extended breastfeeding

Here in the UK we tend to have quite set ideas on how long it is socially acceptable to breastfeed your baby. No one bats an eyelid for a child under the age of one year, but once the baby becomes a walking, talking toddler, complete with a good set of – yikes! – teeth, the lines become rather blurred.

As much as we all know that breast milk is the most complete and nourishing food for a little one, once a knife and fork can be held and consistently used to self-feed without making too much mess, eyebrows raise at the sight of a larger child independently releasing his mother’s breast from her shirt and requesting a feed verbally.

Official recommendations for the length of breastfeeding are surprisingly hard to pin down. Although the NHS has a page devoted to How long to breastfeed, it fails to name an age where the practice should be phased out, instead concentrating on encouraging mothers that ‘Every day counts – the longer you feed your baby breast milk, the more they benefit’ and ‘Each month of breastfeeding lowers the risk of illnesses that can put babies in hospital.’ The closest the site comes to pinpointing a cessation point is recommending to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months of life, thereafter combining breast milk with solid food.

The NCT (National Childbirth Trust) is prepared to push the boat out a little further on its page How long should I breastfeed?, citing The World Health Organization’s recommendation to continue breastfeeding for up to two years and beyond, but focussing on doing ‘what feels right for you and your baby’ and warning that, ‘advice from family and friends [on when to stop] may be well-meaning but inaccurate or biased.’

In many cultures, it’s not unusual to see a toddler being breastfed well into childhood. In the Philippines, mothers are actively encouraged to continue nursing past the age of two, while Indian mothers typically nurse their child until the age of two or three years. But in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, there’s no getting away from the social stigma intrinsically linked to extended nursing. After all, it’s not that long ago that breastfeeding over a certain age could lead to claims of sexual abuse in many Western countries, with the children concerned being taken away from their mothers. In Elizabeth Baldwin’s comprehensive 2001 report, Extended breastfeeding and the law, she details such three cases in the United States, dating back to 1992, in instances where the children were aged between three and five years.

Extended breastfeeding, now also known as ‘attachment parenting’, has recently been a hot topic on the celebrity circuit. After Time featured the controversial front cover of Jamie Lynne Grumet breastfeeding her three-year-old son alongside the caption, Are you mom enough?, the singer Alanis Morissette stepped up to the challenge, declaring on Good Morning America her intent to breastfeed her then 17-month-old son until the age of five or six. ‘I’ll stop whenever he wants,’ she said. ‘Some kids naturally stop at two, some stop a couple of years later, it’s up to the child. I will stop when he says it’s time to stop. For me, I protect his safety and his well-being and his attachment. That stage of development is a very important stage.’

Similarly, actress Mayim Bailik (star of TV shows Blossom and The Big Bang Theory) has joined the debate, publishing her own book on the subject, Beyond the Sling, which discusses how the controversial parenting method is extremely misunderstood in the Western world. To Bailik, who holds a PhD in neuroscience, attachment parenting’s natural, child-led approach not only felt right emotionally, but also made sense on both an intellectual and instinctive level.

Mothers wishing to nurse beyond the age of one should seek solace from the rise of attachment parenting and, if in doubt, should consult their health care provider for more information. Evidently no nutritional harm will come from extended breastfeeding (as long as solid foods are introduced to the diet from around six months), so it remains the mother’s individual right and responsibility to know when it’s time to cut this highly emotional cord.

by Bryony Sutherland