Breastfeeding is an integral component of a complex cultural adaptation of evolutionary infant and child care called "parenting". If mothers and fathers had not been molded by millions of years of evolution to do the right thing in raising babies, we would not have survived as a species! Parenting is a complex mixture of culture and biology. The way we raise our children strongly influences their later childhood and adult behavior.

A whole new science entitled "ethnopediatrics" has developed to help us understand what makes us bring up our children the way we do and to try to discover what is truly the best way to parent our babies. Ethnopediatrics is the study of parents and infants in our own and different cultures. It explores the way different care-taking styles affect the health, well-being and survival of infants. This approach seems very timely with the increased focus in the US on "family values".

All cultures are concerned with children: not only because children are vulnerable, but also because they are society's investment in the future. The human infant is perfectly designed: it knows when to sleep, when to eat and how to cry out to signal it's needs. Parenting, however, is not always straightforward. Conflict can arise in raising children not only between the baby and the caretaker, but also on the more basic level between biology and culture. Caretakers are "hard wired" to respond to a needy infant, but every adult carries personal and cultural "baggage" that determines how he or she will parent. In addition, every society has traditions that guide how adults "should" treat their offspring. The human child is slow to mature, giving parents years in which to make endless choices and decisions about how to bring up their children.

Babies are subject to a multitude of radically different parenting styles. Although most kids grow up just fine, no one really knows how these various styles affect the long-term growth, survival and mental health of babies. Even the most confident of parents worry constantly about whether or not they are doing the right thing. One of the most startling research findings of ethnopediatrics so far is the fact that western parenting styles are not necessarily the "best" and have little to do with what is "natural" for babies!

In the industrialized West many assumptions (e.g. infants must sleep alone to develop independence) and cultural traditions (e.g. scheduled feedings) have assumed the aura of scientific credibility. Yet until very recently there has been no scientific documentation that raising babies one way or another is actually "correct" in the biological and psychological sense. We are just beginning to study the natural history and biology of human infancy and thereby derive the optimal care-taking practices that will shape future generations.

Where do parents get parenting information? Some people feel they have an intuitive/inborn sense of parenting with "gut" impulses in response to infant behaviors. Most feel they consciously or unconsciously adapted parenting styles and techniques from their own parents or extended family. Friends, neighbors, church groups, school, and health care providers provide parenting education. Books, magazines, TV, radio and the Internet are also commonly used resources. There is much scientifically invalid and even dangerous information freely and easily available.

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