I’m a deeply committed, very active breastfeeding advocate, and I want to scream at your Intro to Breastfeeding instructor.

I’m also an anthropologist. The ethnographic record shows very clearly that most children in breastfeeding-normative societies wean sometime during their mother’s next pregnancy. For the vast majority of kids, that means somewhere around age two. Not seven. That doesn’t mean it’s abnormal or wrong or damaging to nurse into the school-aged years. Just very unusual. Atypical.

Speaking more broadly, breastfeeding promotion in the U.S., and in most of the industrialized world, has got to get past the “breast is best!” and “thou shalt breastfeed” messaging and on to the actually supportive messaging: Here is how to get breastfeeding off to a good start in the early, challenging days and weeks postpartum. Here is where to find the info and support that you’ll need if unexpected problems arise. Here is how you can obtain donor milk if needed, and here is how to safely prepare and feed formula if needed. Long-term, here is help for continuing to breastfeed if you need to leave your baby to return to work or school or whatever. Longer-term, here are the societal changes that need to happen to make it possible for more women to reach their own breastfeeding goals. Here are the evidence-based numbers about why breastfeeding matters for the health of babies and mothers, why this must become a societal responsibility and not solely the burden of individual mothers.

I share your exasperation with single-minded and extreme promoters of “natural” birth and parenting, whatever that is taken to mean this decade (it’s a moving target because the whole concept of “natural” is, of course, culturally constructed.) When they lose sight of the actual mother in her actual immediate circumstances, as they clearly did when you were facing a cesarean … I just lose all respect for them. Agendas are not more important than people.

I hope your birth went smoothly, your baby arrived safely, and you have been recovering well. I hope you have been too busy falling in love with your new daughter to give this whole debate much thought. Above all, I hope you are receiving the support, understanding, and respect that every new parent deserves.