Psychologic Aspects of Lactation

Abstract

THE rapidity with which lactation failure spreads through human groups suggests that it is triggered by psychologic factors. For instance, national surveys indicate that the neonatal breast-feeding rate in the United States fell by almost half during just ten years.¹ In the course of twenty years in Bristol, England, the number of three-month-old breast-fed infants dropped from 77 to 36 per cent.² In an obstetric clinic in France the proportion of babies getting no breast milk increased from 31 to 51 per cent in just five years.³ This decrease is so rapid that hereditary factors could not be operative and . . .