Breastfeeding has always been an important factor in child development. I choose this topic to research because I wanted to know the different veiwpoints of mothers, doctors and child development that stemmed from breastfeeding. I ran across this article from a mother from Mexico , she stated:
"I'm from Mexico and breastfeeding timing goes along with income and education. Lower income and less educated breastfeed longer than 2 years since moms don't have money to buy formula or to provide with any other healthy foods for their children. Moms that are more educated and have better finances tend to breastfeed for only 6 months since they believe that breast milk starts losing it's health benefits after that age when babies start solids. Some will breastfeed up to 12 months just for bonding but after that babies are weaned gradually. The ability of buying healthy foods compensates for the lack of use of breast milk.
Families in Mexico have very close family units and it's not uncommon to live with your parents when you're 30 or live with wife and kids and all your immediate family in the same house. So although children don't get the long bonding period of breastfeeding as in the US, they seem to be unaffected and still have very strong bonds to their family and grow up very healthy too. Children that were breastfed for 2 years or more were not necessarily healthy since their mothers weren't. I think this just shows the other side of the coin :) It's great that moms in the US can be healthy and choose to breastfeed as long as they want! "
Reading this article, I found several contributing factors to breastfeeding. Income and education were vital factors that I had never considered important in deciding to breastfeed.
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