by Katherine Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology,
Texas A & M University
[This essay was originally directed to
one person. It has been edited slightly
to make it less specific.]
Someone from parent-l passed
along a post about children sleeping
through the night on to me and asked
me to respond. I was one of the original
parent-l folks, but haven’t been
on for a long time. I am an Associate
Professor of Anthropology and
Nutrition at Texas A&M University, and
I do research on infant/child feeding
beliefs/practices both cross-culturally
and from an evolutionary perspective,
as well as research on children’s
health and growth. I know from firsthand
experience that being a new
parent is a difficult time of adjustment,
especially when expectations
don’t match reality, especially when
our culture has taught us that children
should have certain needs / wants /
behaviors and then our children don’t
seem to fit that mold. This problem
of a mismatch between expectations
and reality can be very difficult for
new parents to accept and adjust to.
Sometimes, some children can be
encouraged / convinced / forced to fit
the mold of cultural expectations, and
they do fine. Other times, though they
do eventually fit the mold, it is at the
expense of their sense of who they
are, their self-confidence, their view of
the world as a safe and trusting place,
sometimes, even, at the expense of
their health or life. Probably nowhere
do cultural expectations and the reality
of children’s needs conflict more
than in the two areas of breastfeeding
frequency and sleeping behaviors.
Human children are designed
(whether you believe by millions of
years of evolution, or by God, it doesn’t
matter)—to nurse very frequently,
based on the composition of the milk
of the species, the fact that all higher
primates (Primates are the zoological
Order to which humans belong, higher
primates include monkeys and
apes) keep their offspring in the
mother’s arms or on her back for
several years, the size of the young
child’s stomach, the rapidity with
which breast milk is digested, the
need for an almost constant source
of nutrients to grow that huge brain
(in humans, especially), and so on. By
very frequently, I mean 3-4 times per
hour, for a few minutes each time. The
way in which some young infants are
fed in our culture—trying to get them
to shift to a 3-4 hour schedule, with
feedings of 15-20 minutes at a time,
goes against our basic physiology.
Sleeping through the Night
pathways 17
But humans are very adaptable,
and some mothers will be able to
make sufficient milk with this very
infrequent stimulation and draining
of the breasts, and some children
will be able to adapt to large meals
spaced far apart. Unfortunately, some
mothers don’t make enough milk with
this little nursing, and some babies
can’t adjust, and so are fussy, cry a
lot, seem to want to nurse “before
it is time” and fail to grow and thrive.
Of course, usually the mother’s body
is blamed—“You can’t make enough
milk”—rather than the culturallyimposed
expectation that feeding
every 3-4 hours should be sufficient,
and the mother begins supplementing
with formula, which leads to a steady
spiral downward to complete weaning
from the breast. Human children are
also designed to have breast milk be
a part of their diet for a minimum of
2.5 years, with
many indicators
pointing to 6-7
years as the true
physiological
duration of
breastfeeding—regardless of what
your cultural beliefs may be. I can
provide you with references to my
research on this topic if you wish
to read more.
The same is true of sleeping. Human
children are designed to be sleeping
with their parents. The sense of
touch is the most important sense
to primates, along with sight. Young
primates are carried on their mother’s
body and sleep with her for years
after birth, often until well after weaning.
The expected pattern is for mother
and child to sleep together, and
for child to be able to nurse whenever
they want during the night. Normal,
healthy, breastfed and co-sleeping
children do not sleep “through the
night” (say 7-9 hours at a stretch)
until they are 3-4 years old, and no
longer need night nursing. I repeat—
this is NORMAL and HEALTHY.
Dr. James McKenna’s research on
co-sleeping clearly shows the dangers
of solitary sleeping in young infants,
who slip into abnormal patterns of
very deep sleep from which it is very
difficult for them to rouse themselves
when they experience an episode
of apnea (stop breathing). When cosleeping,
the mother is monitoring
the baby’s sleep and breathing
patterns, even though she herself
is asleep. When the baby has an
episode of apnea, she rouses the
baby by her movements and touch.
This is thought to be the primary
mechanism by which co-sleeping
protects children from Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome. In other words,
many cases of SIDS in solitary sleeping
children are thought to be due
to them having learned to sleep for
long stretches at a time at a very
early age, so they find themselves
in these deep troughs of sleep,
then they may experience an episode
of apnea, and no one is there to
notice or rouse them from it, so
they just never start breathing again.
Co-sleeping also allows a mother
to monitor the baby’s temperature
during the night, to be there if they
spit up and start to choke, and just
to provide the normal, safe environment
that the baby/child has been
designed to expect.
Is this convenient for parents? No!
Is this difficult for some new parents
to adjust to? Yes!
No doubt about it, the gap between
what our culture teaches us to expect
of the sleep patterns of a young child
(read them a story, tuck them in, turn
out the light, and not see them again
for 8 hours) and the reality of how
children actually sleep if healthy and
normal, yawns widely.
But the first steps to dealing with
the fact that your young child doesn’t
sleep through the night, or doesn’t
want to sleep without you is to realize
that:
(1) Not sleeping through the night
until they are 3 or 4 years of age is
normal and healthy behavior for
human infants.
(2) Your children are not being
difficult or manipulative, they are
being normal and healthy, and
behaving in ways that are appropriate
for our species.
Once you understand these simple
truths, it becomes much easier to
deal with parenting your child at
night. Once you give up the idea
that you must have 8 hours of uninterrupted
sleep at night, and view
these nighttime interactions with
your child as precious and fleeting,
you get used to them very quickly.
I highly recommend Dr. Sears’ book
on Nighttime Parenting [available
from the La Leche League International
Catalogue]. Our children’s early years
represent the most important and
influential time of their lives. It
passes all too quickly. But meeting
your child’s needs during these first
few years will pay off in many ways
in the years to come.
Feel free to respond, argue, disagree,
ask questions, ask for references, etc.
Or visit my web page at
prairienet.org/laleche/dettwyler.html
Dr. Katherine A. Dettwyler is now
a semi-retired Adjunct Professor of
Anthropology at Texas A&M University,
where she taught from 1987 to 2000.
She is the author of Dancing Skeletons:
Life and Death in West Africa, which
recounts tales of her fieldwork on child
health in Mali. Dancing Skeletons was
awarded the 1995 Margaret Mead Award
from the American Anthropological
Association and the Society for
Applied Anthropology. She is also the
co-editor of Breastfeeding: Biocultural
Perspectives, which includes her own
two chapters “Beauty and the Breast:
The Cultural Context of Breastfeeding
in the United States,” and “A Time to
Wean: The Hominid Blueprint for a
Natural Age of Weaning in Modern
Human Populations.”
