Nutrition, lactation and fertility in two Mexican rural communities

Policies are currently being pursued in Third World countries which promote lactation as both a fertility control measure and a means of improving child health and decreasing infant mortality rates. However, the relationship between nutrition, lactation and fertility in the human is a complex one in which social and psychological factors are involved as well as physiological and biochemical mechanisms. Little is known about the effects of these social and psychological variables on the biological processes. Observations made in the course of the anthropological fieldwork study reported in this paper raise questions regarding the assumption of the universal applicability of lactation policies in third world countries. Findings from this study are supported by the anthropological literature which indicates that breast feeding behaviour is culturally patterned and that there is a wide variation in such behaviour. The variations in environmental resources as well as in the ideological notions of nutrition which pattern the behaviour governing the exploitation of such resources as well as feeding behaviour is seen as advantageous in that they provide a 'natural laboratory' situation for examining the conflicting hypotheses concerning the relationship between nutrition, lactation and fertility.