Kathy Dettwyler it was for me the great discovery about breastfeeding issues from a point of view of social Sciences. It is an American anthropologist, a professor at the University of Delaware in Newark. His specialty has been the study of breastfeeding in humans. For the development of his theories he takes as a basis the cultural anthropology, focusing on the comparison with the different cultures of the current and historical Humanity, and also the ethology, that is, animal behavior.
He has published several basic works on these issues, especially notable is his second book co-edited with Patricia Stuart-Macadam, entitled "Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives" ("Lactation, Biocultural Perspectives"). In which he explains deeply what is the duration of breastfeeding in different cultures and offers very interesting information for mothers who opt for prolonged breastfeeding.
On its page it publishes numerous consultation articles that treat breastfeeding in traditional societies, the duration of breastfeeding in other species of mammals, or the reasons for prolonged breastfeeding. In summary, comparing humans of different cultures and other species, it could be considered that human breastfeeding would have a natural duration between 2 and a half years and 7 years, so that also the Breastfeeding Committee of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics is shown according to its "Breastfeeding Guide, Manual for professionals".
In future topics I will explain how far their conclusions reach, that as information, whatever option we take, they are enormously revealing about the nature of our species.
