never would say to a mom to stop caressing, kissing, to console his son reached a certain age? "Now your son is two years, stop to console if you think that they need it, it's great is enough, otherwise the defects .."
Breastfeeding is an act of love and as such has no time limit for nature, love is not time! The hormones involved in lactation are the same maternal responsible for conception and childbirth, breast-feeding because it is part of a woman's sex life.
The mother who chooses to breastfeed her baby for a long time he must do so in a world where only the breast as an object of sexual attraction Regardless of the primary physiological function.
As there would never dream of entering the intimacy of an act of love that leads to conception, so it should be when a mother breast feeds her baby. Every love relationship has its rules, its intimacy, and nobody can interfere in the couple, who in addition to the food you are exchanging a code that will be affective and relational in their memory forever.
Instead, it is common practice that a mother nursing her child to become easy targets of comments from carers to feed. Comments that worsen with increasing age of the little breastfed, especially in societies such as the Italian one, where culture models suggests that low parental contact.
are now numerous studies related to breastfeeding in different cultures and the results are not quite so obvious as to our reality. Often the mothers who allow themselves to have around as friends and relatives, and from what they hear or read in books and magazines devoted to them, since it does not exist in our country a culture that supports breastfeeding, and there are no models to reference. Mothers who breastfeed for a long time in most cases have to hide or lie to those who have round about.
Mary Ainsworth (1), famous psychologist, thanks to some research she performed in Africa, in 1972 speculated that weaning age children should be around two to three years and the terms of breastfeeding on demand, even at night, sleeping near the baby and nurse him to sleep, help to make the child more confident and increase your confidence in the fact that the mother understands his signals and their needs. This would be a sort of injection of confidence and security to which the child would refer all his life in times of difficulty.
Dettwailer Katherine (2), American anthropologist, comparing and analyzing records of the nursing literature on the age at weaning in different cultures, points out that there are customs very different among the various peoples of the earth, the ideal age at which you should wean, and based on his studies this author says that if weaning occurred without being influenced by society's rules of membership and had complied with the biological process chosen by nature for thousands of years through natural selection, this would be done at an age between the two and a half years to seven.
is clear that in civilized societies, the lack of breastfeeding is compensated by the spread of hygiene and medical care, but is still not adequately appreciated that in addition to these requirements the child, through contact with his mother's womb also fulfills its need security, affection and reassurance.
Mary Ersilia Armenians (3), Italian pediatrician and lactation consultant IBCLC, says: "The Italian psychology is one of the pillars of legitimacy to stop breast-feeding continued beyond the first few months as it is not aware of the deep roots from the point hormonal and physiological view of breastfeeding in women and children. This is a coverage that our company adopts the cover of legitimacy for conduct and practices that do not respond at all to the biological needs of our children. "
In our society, psychologists even think that breastfeeding a child beyond the first year of life, can cause psychological damage, a reduction in the acquisition of the autonomy of the child, but there are no scientific data to show it, nor does it explain how to conduct so dangerous to the individual would be selected in the adaptation of the species up to the present day.
Some psychologists and pediatricians even blaming the mothers who do not wean the baby from the breast within the first year, claiming that they have difficulties in their break away from the child and in fact, help to generate feelings of distrust and confusion about self listening to their instincts of child care and certainly do not help them make informed decisions and autonomous. This
does not mean that a mother should breastfeed for strength and long, but only if the mother has this intention should be respected and supported. This is a crucial aspect that I would like to highlight: some psychologists would support the mothers but in fact, they threaten self-esteem and decision-making autonomy, sheer misinformation. Place them in an authoritarian and directive, making them employees rather than promote the activation of their resources and their skills, while respecting the choices.
reflected in the term "weaning" which literally means "to remove the necklace," or the vice. Pass the message that breastfeeding spoil the child. It is the starting point by which you create an imaginary collective incorrect, since studies show that breastfeeding mothers are those with a long, personal characteristics for a greater sense of self-efficacy.
The term "extended breastfeeding" is questionable: prolonged compared to what? If even the WHO gives a limit beyond which you must stop breastfeeding because they have to give psychologists or all pseudopediatri surrounding a breastfeeding mother?
Carlos Gonzales (4), English pediatrician, father of three and founder of the Catalan breastfeeding argues that there is no limit to breastfeeding, that there is some motivation, medical, psychological or nutritional obliged to wean at a certain age. That women are free to decide how to breastfeed without being influenced by the opinions of experts or assumed.
Michele Grandolfo, research director of the Institute of Health, says that breastfeeding is a matter of expression skills. We noted that in the field of health promotion of the basic objective should be to inform women and their families to help them make independent, informed decisions as an expression of its own jurisdiction.
Only then will the true empowerment: the women will have more confidence in themselves and thus in their ability to cope with problems solvable through increased research capacity of health.
So the real power of the mother should not be represented by autonomy and dependence on experts who tend to dominate and to guide decisions and behaviors. The free expression and independent of their skills before they become mothers, there would not even have imagined, gives strength to the mothers and is associated with increased duration of breastfeeding.
The studies show that this author is not a question of how to breastfeed, or if there is an age fixed to remove the child from the womb, but rather, to put mom in a position to feel strong, informed and independent in make their own choices about how, when and especially how to breastfeed.
There are also studies that highlight that what the greatest influence on the decision about the duration of breastfeeding for mothers: they are the views of people around the breastfeeding mother. The longer the breastfeeding mother and little support around them.
It is clear therefore that the problem is purely cultural, not a culture of knowledge, but ignorance in the true sense of the word, because in fact, breastfeeding is not a subject of study in university programs of the Italian School of Psychology. Yet psychologists express unfavorable opinions loudly over breastfeeding first months of life, ignoring the psychobiological mechanisms.
Braibanti (5) beautifully stated that "breastfeeding is good for a long time both mother and child and the mother's point of view, in addition to several positive effects on women's health, breast-feeding promotes firmer bonds of attachment to child's early interaction and greater competence. This increases the confidence of the mother to the child and to herself, then take away over-protective attitudes and symbiosis that arise from prolonged lack of security both to herself and to the relationship with his child.
separation at an early age and attitudes of women in the jurisdiction of the disconfirmation strengthen the role nursing mother, however, feelings of insecurity and crisis. Thus prolonged breast feeding may not be harmful to either the mother or the child or from a psychological point of view, or physiological. There is no evidence that breastfeeding is a sign of continued difficulties in the normal relationship between mother and child.
Alexander Lowen (6), psychologist, father of bioenergetics, says that "The child needs physical contact with his mother as she needs food and air. The necessary intimacy is achieved mainly through breastfeeding. Only the child knows what needs contact and for how long, some children need it more than others.
contact with the child's mother picks up the energy system of the energy of your system and to approach the breast of his mother. If the baby is breastfed approximately three years, what I believe is the time required to meet its basic needs, weaning will not be traumatic, and many mental disorders could be explained ".
This author raises a fundamental question in my opinion : that the primary need, objective and universal for all children, contact.
I want to mention finally, the pediatrician Elena Balsamo (7) reflecting on the question of the duration of the second approach dell'etnopediatria, branch of Pediatrics comparing the mode of care of children in various traditional cultures of the Earth.
In my opinion, the only way you can have a true picture of what is adaptive for humans and which are genetically predetermined and the real needs of mothers and children wherever they live, it makes no sense to refer to a single parameter culture, because if it is too simplistic and limiting the resources to be activated when it relates to a child.
Well, according to this approach, we found that in most traditional cultures of the world women breastfeed for an average duration of approximately two years. What caused the big change in terms of infant feeding We owe it to the process of industrialization and early weaning is a Western invention and post-industrial.
The author also states that enable every child to leave the womb of the mother when it is ready, as well as choose the frequency and duration of meals is a big help to the development of autonomy and ability to make choices aware in the future. In cultures where this happens, children are safer and less aggressive as adults.
Yet many think that a mother who allows this to be the slave of the child and not capable of imposing, when perhaps she would be a pleasure if only he did not feel observed and judged. Children may
so also learn the difference between objects and people: the mother who is willing to offer the breast meat and bone meal also at the time of falling, without heat, availability, and communication exchanges glances from which to learn to relate as an example for relations of the future, it is certainly more than an object to take to bed.
Yet this view suggests to most people, always to cultural conditioning, in my opinion, that the child is spoiled and has no rules, it's rude. The anthropological investigation tells us exactly the opposite and I think it will take many studies and many years for this information reaches everyone, not just to get what is best do and to give an indication of behaviors to parents, but with the sole aim of giving food for thought and then be able to put families in better conditions to make informed choices for themselves informed and generating both physical and mental health in the long term.
I believe that virtually all children learn from the example that is given by parents and caregivers themselves. If this is an example of absence and lack of contact, the surrogate mother of all kinds, lack of availability and listening, other times specified, and not in harmony with the growth of the individual child, they will be adults with fractures relational plotted in their memory, hard to break up (8).
is an aspect often neglected by psychologists, which should stimulate long-term studies on the implications of the relational mode of feeding and educational schemes imposed rigid yet by a certain kind of cultural conditioning and the products on the market, especially the editorial.
Obviously this does not mean that children should not have rules and that parents are in the service of petty tyrants, it only means that times have changed and we must expand our investigation, whereas breast-feeding from a psychological point of view as relational experience base from which children learn and are likely to build their future dealings, their thoughts and their prejudices from what they have experienced.
Alessandra Bortolotti
