# So when are you to old to breast feed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 10, 2002, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234 "2002-07-10T12:29:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2002, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/41 "2002-07-11T20:05:40Z")
What the hell does being from the MIDWEST have to do with anything?!?!?! Hello? JamesCarroll? I’ll bet the mom is producing milk (although not really supplying much of the child’s nutrition). I mean, you don’t need DAILY stimulus to produce. You do to produce vast quantities of milk, of course. My son weaned over two years ago and I still can get a little colostrum-like substance (or maybe more like hindmilk?) from the ol’ funbags. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2002, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/42 "2002-07-12T10:35:07Z")
Idiot! I said SOCCER mom, not sucker! ---
**Author:** ![robwrigley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc79bd/32.png) [@robwrigley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robwrigley)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2002, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/43 "2002-07-12T10:46:31Z")
“A recent Stanfor report indicates that, while breast feeding is the ideal source of nutrients for a new born, it can prove leathel for 90-year-old heart patients.” -George Carlin ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2002, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/44 "2002-07-12T11:00:16Z")
This situation reminds me of **The Giving Tree**. Kid runs in when he needs ten minutes of tit and runs out again. Takes and takes, and when he needs something else, takes that, and keeps taking until there’s nothing left. Also reminds me of the kids’ book entitled **I Love You Forever** , wherein the mom sneaks into her **married** son’s house at night to rock him while he’s asleep. Now, I realize that in this scenario, the child is passive, but it appears both mother and son have issues here. And I’m sure at least one person in at least one thread has already said, “Yeah, he wants it…but if I let _my_ kids have everything _they_ want, they’d eat themselves to death/flunk out of school to watch TV/skateboard on the roof!”, so I won’t further belabor the point. ---
**Author:** ![KellyM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/57b2e6/32.png) [@KellyM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyM)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2002, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/45 "2002-07-12T12:03:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by QueenAl \* > \*\ ***Hedra** , yYou state that milk production isn’t an on/off thing, but (as I’m sure you’re aware), it’s dependent on hormones that don’t hang around forever. This child was away from his mother for two years, and presumably in this time she had no opportunity to feed him. Unless she spontaneously lactates, she won’t be producing breastmilk now, regardless of how often he feeds. \*\* I’ve never had children, and regardless of that I do produce some sort of “nipular discharge” with relatively little effort (or so says my girlfriend). Nulliparous females, and even some males, can lactate regularly; all it takes is sufficiently frequent sucking at the nipple. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2002, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/46 "2002-07-12T14:48:42Z")
My personal take on it is that when the kid’s old enough to remember in later years, it’s time to stop. It’s a bit Oedipal if the boobies he’s picturing as he’s beating off are Mommy’s. The [Chicago Sun-Times article](http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-nurse10.html) added the following tidbit: > [@](#): > > In fact, she said, the greatest harm to befall her son was when Illinois child welfare officials took him from her for six months in 2000 amid allegations she was breast-feeding him against his will and sleeping with him in the nude. It doesn’t say whether the ‘sleeping with him in the nude’ allegations were confirmed. But if the child-welfare people thought that might be happening, I don’t blame them for reacting pretty strongly. **Tranq** may have a point with respect to differing rates of child development, but the problem is, you don’t always know how your child’s developing in different areas. I was a shy, scared, introverted little kid. (I was regularly beating off at six and a half, and how would anyone have known?) The mom in this case doesn’t know whether she’s producing milk or not. She also doesn’t know whether her kid’s _already_ whacking off to visions of her familiar boobies. Which, IMHO, is reason enough for her to stop. ---
**Author:** ![hedra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/779978/32.png) [@hedra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hedra)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2002, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/47 "2002-07-12T15:27:21Z")
**RTFirefly** - _I_ remember nursing. I was weaned at 6 months. But I remember it anyway (long memories run in my family - and no, no hypnosis required). Should I have been weaned immediately? Or how about kids who are nursed to 2-3-4 years, and also remember it. Is this wrong? I know a woman who is married to a guy who was nursed for almost 4 years. He remembers it. He thinks it was great, remembers it fondly, was happy to have been nursed that long. He is not at all turned on by it. He, like other people (lactating mothers included) is able to separate ‘mother/lactating/breasts’ from ‘partner/sexual/breasts’. Or how about my son, who remembers it, as well? He remembers it fondly, too. My ‘yalas’ are a nice thing that he puts his head on when he’s sad or sleepy. Are you sayihg that since he can remember, I should have weaned him sooner? I don’t think that idea flies any more than ‘if they can ask for it’ does - since language acquisition and use is highly individual, and in most cases kids can at least sign ‘asking’ for it pretty early, and certainly well before the WHO margin of 2 years. I think you’ve got the same problem there that you said you had with developmental age - You don’t know if they can remember it (I presume you mean ‘when they grow up’ since kids do seem to have memory capacity at birth and possibly before - but most stuff doesn’t ‘stick’ in an accessible way to adulthood). And while it might seem odd to YOU to remember it (because you have no memories of it to compare to), I don’t find it odd to remember it at all, and from what I can tell, neither does my son. It seems no more likely to be a trigger for whacking off than seeing your mother’s hair, or getting a glimpse of her in the shower or in her swim suit. This is “MOM” we’re talking about, right? The person who most kids feel cannot ever have had a sexual moment in her life (barring your conception, and even that must have been done without touching each other, LOL!). Her breasts have a job, they aren’t (ick) sexual! Kids self-protect from sexualizing their parents by desexualizing them, right? Why would nursing be any different at all? Now, I do think you should use ‘stimulated reactions’ as a guideline for when you stop in an individual case, just as you’d stop being naked around your child if they reacted ‘inappropriately’ to seeing you naked. Still an individual event, though, not a generic/absolute one. ---
**Author:** ![hedra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/779978/32.png) [@hedra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hedra)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2002, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/48 "2002-07-12T15:33:50Z")
OOPs re-read, and yes, firefly, you said ‘when they are older’… sorry! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2002, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/49 "2002-07-12T21:07:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by hedra \* > **RTFirefly** - _I_ remember nursing. I was weaned at 6 months. But I remember it anyway (long memories run in my family - and no, no hypnosis required). Another theory ruined by the facts, as the saying goes. My earliest memories are from age 3+, and even they are pretty vague and spotty. While I’m aware that we’re all different, I’d been under the (perhaps inaccurate) impression that memories from before age 2 are quite rare. But remembering stuff from _six months old_ - that boggles my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2002, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234/50 "2002-07-13T06:43:33Z")
From the diary Steven Wright kept as a baby: > [@](#): > > Day 1: Still tired from “the move”. > Day 2: Everyone talks to me like I’m an idiot. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-are-you-to-old-to-breast-feed/118234.md?page=2)