Being highly suspicious of this dubious-sounding “fact” (for which no sources are ever given), I did a little… well, I hesitate to call it “research,” really: the statement can be debunked with the most cursory of google searches. Just as a little challenge, try googling the phrase “average duration of breastfeeding” (or “mean duration of breastfeeding” does fine too) plus the name of basically any country you care to think of: India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Egypt, Thailand, you name it. This search will direct you to actual papers written on infant feeding practices in developing countries. What you get is a load of figures like 21 months (Niger), 27.5 months (Nepal), 18-20 months (rural Thailand), 8.7 months (urban China), 18 months (Cameroon), 22 months (Kenya), 20 months (Nigeria), 28 months (Rwanda) and 19 months (Uganda)—that was a random selection, by the way. Seriously, I will mail a box of Godiva chocos to anyone who can find just one country where the average age is even close to four. The longest duration I was able to find was in Bangladesh (31 months) but even that’s a way off. Or, if you are feeling lazy, you could just refer to this table here.
The table makes interesting reading for a number of reasons. Did you imagine that mums in sub-Saharan Africa would be nursing the longest? So did I. We’d be wrong, apparently. Also, check the figures for “exclusive” breastfeeding; looks like mums in a lot of poor countries introduce solids pretty early. But these are subjects for other posts.
The table makes interesting reading for a number of reasons. Did you imagine that mums in sub-Saharan Africa would be nursing the longest? So did I. We’d be wrong, apparently. Also, check the figures for “exclusive” breastfeeding; looks like mums in a lot of poor countries introduce solids pretty early. But these are subjects for other posts.
I’m not sure where the “four years” thing came from, but I’m guessing that what happened at some point in the great game of Chinese whispers that is the internet, is that someone took a look at the Kathy Dettwyler paper (a paper which itself based on some pretty questionable logic, as Mainstream Parenting pointed out—although in fact Dettwyler herself describes the average-weaning-age-is-four-years thing as “neither accurate nor meaningful”) which states that the natural duration of breastfeeding is between 2.5 and seven years and basically stuck a pin halfway in between those two numbers. Presumably somebody else saw this figure being quoted in the same paragraph as the thing about the WHO recommending breastfeeding for two years, and sort of blurred the two statements together in her mind.And so on.
Bullshitometer verdict
So no, the average age of nursing across the world is not four; I’d hesitate to name a figure, but given that only about half the world’s kids between 20 and 23 months are still on the boob, it can’t be all that high. I’m not bringing this point up because I’m trying to tell mothers of four-year-old nurselings not to nurse them, as I guess that is their business. But I am a fact geek, and I do think it sets a poor precedent when we repeat things that aren’t true and don’t bother to check our sources. And then there are the mothers like that poster on a forum I regularly go to, who is tandem nursing a toddler and a baby despite being obviously fed up with it, and is basically trying to get through the experience by repeating to herself over and over again that “the average global age of weaning is four”; if the myth is being used to put pressure on women who want to wean older babies/toddlers, that’s not cool.
Finally, the very fact that people have unquestioningly swallowed such an improbable figure says something rather disturbing about our view of the world of 2011—like we actually think that 80% (or whatever) of the world’s population is still barefoot and living in the mud hut. But I’ll leave it to Hans Roslin to expand a little on this idea in Debunking Myths about the Third World—the video is great fun by the way and is worth watching for the graphics and presentation alone. Enjoy!
