Age Patterns of Breast-Feeding in Africa and the United States Share a Common Functional Form

Document Type

Article

Authors

Bart Holland, UMDNJ - New Jersey Medical School
William F. Pratt, National Center for Health Statistics, Maryland

Abstract

Many social variables affect breast-feeding patterns, but naturally due to biological constraints, breast-feeding practice cannot be altered limitlessly to suit social norms. A common functional “shape” might therefore be expected to describe breast-feeding discontinuation probabilities by age in various societies. If such a common functional form were to exist, the situation would be analogous to that with birthweight distributions: birthweights in different populations vary with respect to mean and dispersion, but the distributions they follow are essentially normal curves, i.e., they are members of a single family of curves. We demonstrate here that a common function describes the curves of breast-feeding discontinuation in the United States and in an African population with natural fertility levels. Lesthaeghe and Page (1980) developed a two-parameter model standard curve of the probability of breast-feeding by duration since birth, based on African data. We fitted data from the U.S. National Survey of Family Growth Cycles II and III to their model curve; the U.S. data followed the standard curve quite closely. The findings demonstrate empirically that a common family of monotonically declining curves can describe patterns of breast-feeding discontinuation in quite different societies. Contrasting findings of Ford and Kim concerning durations of post-partum amenorrhea are discussed.

Recommended Citation

Holland, Bart and Pratt, William F. (1988) "Age Patterns of Breast-Feeding in Africa and the United States Share a Common Functional Form," Human Biology: Vol. 60: Iss. 3, Article 10.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol/vol60/iss3/10