Lactation - Current Concepts and Concerns

Abstract

The importance of breast feeding in infant nutrition, health and survival has long been recognized. The recognition that lactation may have profound effects on maternal nutrition and fertility is of more recent origin. It is now well established that over millennia, breast feeding has been the major determinant of infant growth, health and survival and the contraceptive effect of lactation has been the principal regulator of human fertility.

The first half of the present century witnessed a profound decline in breast feeding in industrialized countries, so that in the sixties most women in these countries were not breast feeding their infants; bottle feeding had .become the convenient norm and the symbol of sophistication. Luckily the tradition of universal prolonged lactation remained essentially unaltered during this period in developing countries like India.