Need Your Info Ladies

[runnerbrit]

I am having a discussion with my mom about breastfeeding in public and American views vs. the views in other countries. I told her that the average age that children breastfeed to worldwide is 4. She said maybe in thrid world countries. So, I need your sources. Do any of you have the average age that children breastfeed to in Sweden, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, etc.?

[In Exile]

6 months for a lot of kids in Germany. So that's not going to help you.

For whatever reason those magical 6 months seem to be an almost "religious" recommendation and a lot of moms wean to introduce bottles around that time. It seems that the "solid food" recommendation (actually "Beikost" in German which make actually more sense than "solid food" in english-because "Beikost" means "additional food", not "sole") is being interpreted as "weaning".

So, Germany unfortunately is not going to help you. I also know plenty of people that wean after 3 months. My biggest "are you STILL nursing" comments came from German relatives, not my american inlaws.

But, you will also find plenty of NFL families, you just have to look-just like here.

[mysticmomma]

http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html

Not exactly what you are looking for, but biologically based.

[mysticmomma]

why is it that while I'm googling, all that comes up with regards to weaning is about calves?

[CEVmommy]

Somewhere on the WHO website you can find a report of various breastfeeding practices broken down by country and what statistic you want. It's like a little search tool where you select the statistic and the country and the year range and it spits it out. One of the stats available is average BF age or something to that effect. I have it bookmarked on my work computer, but I won't be back there until Tuesday. I hope you can find it!

[CEVmommy]

Okay, I found it. It's called The WHO Global Data Bank on Breastfeeding and Complementary Feeding. You can look for any/all of these indicators for different countries:

Ever breastfed rate
Mean duration of breastfeeding
Median duration of breastfeeding
Exclusive breastfeeding rate at 1 mo.
Exclusive breastfeeding rate at 2 mo.
Exclusive breastfeeding rate at 3 mo.
Exclusive breastfeeding rate at 4 mo.
Exclusive breastfeeding rate at 5 mo.
Exclusive breastfeeding rate at 6 mo.
Exclusive breastfeeding rate at <4 mo.
Predominant breastfeeding rate
Timely complementary feeding rate
Continued breastfeeding rate (1 year)
Continued breastfeeding rate (2 year)
Bottle-feeding rate
Exclusive breastfeeding rate at <6 mo.

http://www.who.int/research/iycf/bfcf/bfcf.asp?menu=00

[MittensKittens]

Here in Serbia, it's even worse than in the US. Babies are fed formula at the hospital by nurses (babies are separated from moms) as long as they are in hospital, usually a week, because the new moms "do not yet have any milk". Almost every woman says they didn't nurse due to a "lack of milk" (which is what they get told at well baby checks) and everyone who knows about my extended breast feeding asks how come it's possible that I still have milk!