Remember that this is unedited text -- like "letters to the editor." Identifying information, such as names, has been removed; but otherwise it is posted here pretty much as it came in. So read it as personal opinion shared with warm intentions but without authority of any kind.
I'm a Chinese American living in Hong Kong and do not see any locals nursing in public. I've nursed on the train and in restaurants and people mostly avert their eyes. I wonder how common it is here. There is a La Leche League and mostly foreigners attend. My daughter will be two in 2 weeks.
In Singapore, we have quite a number of races. The three main races are Chinese, Indian, Malay. Of them, the Chinese are the majority, but breastfeeding rates are lowest among us. Most (~67%) breastfeed less than two months. Only 11% breastfeed more than six months.
According to my 80-year-old Mother-In-Law who hails from China, back in her village in Canton, the women would mostly breastfeed exclusively for one year ("no time to cook porridge!", she says) and after some introduction of rice porridge at one year, they will continue to breastfeed up to four years. Natural Child spacing in her village seemed to be a minimum of three to four years, simply using breastfeeding as a contraceptive method.
But I think in the cities, breastfeeding was not as prevalent (which is what crept up in Singapore). Most "rich" mothers DO NOT breastfeed, even in China.
We once had a woman visiting from the Philippines who told us that in her town the Kindergarten age students were given a break in the middle of the school day specifically for the purpose of going home to breastfeed. That certainly gave our group a different perspective on what "normal" breastfeeding is in some parts of the world.
[Can anyone confirm or refute this story? It brings the "What do you think recess is for?" quip that makes the rounds sometimes, but I had only heard it in jest. NJB]
A mother writes from Singapore: My housemaid is from the Philippines. She says the story is true! Her mother had eight kids and in the Philippines, especially in the provinces, they breastfed at least two years. Even if the mother has to go out to work without the baby (they don't pump and bring the milk home), they still manage to partially breastfeed over a year minimum.
As for the "breastfeeding break" during recess, she says that this is true especially for the kids that are not as strong and healthy. Their mothers will thus try to breastfeed them as long as possible, up to six years old.
For two years I lived in the NWT of Canada. There, I could walk into the health centre and discover Inuit mothers calmly nursing their fretful five and six year olds. They obviously didn't care what anyone thought about it either! I realize our culture is a long way from that kind of acceptance but I'd like to think we've stretched the envelope a bit.
A quote from Barbara Kingsolver on cultural attitudes toward toddlers.
Data from this study comes from about 1990. Breastfeeding duration was longer than in the rest of the U.S., but still below national health goals for 2000. 16% of Hawiian babies in the study were still nursing at one year. The two groups that nursed the longest were rural island mothers and well educated Hawaiians and Caucasians. Well educated Philippines-born Filipino women, however, were more likely to use formula than were U.S.-born Filipinos or other ethnic groups. Filipino mothers in general tended to wean early, as did Japanese women, in spite of their high levels of education. Feeding of formula or fruit tended to reduce the duration of breastfeeding, as did full-time employment outside the home. Part-time employment, especially as practiced on the rural islands, did not curtail breastfeeding. Participation in a WIC breastfeeding program increased the duration, but receiving formula from WIC led to earlier weaning. (Novotny R, Hla MM, Kieffer EC, Park C-B, Mor J, Thiele M, Breastfeeding duration in a multiethnic population in Hawaii, Birth 27:2 June 2000)