[moeris]

Most of the comments here are implying that there is some environmental change which has caused breastfeeding to become harder or less efficient. The article doesn't seem to say that, though. I didn't see any implication that breastfeeding was better back in prehistory.

It's possible that it's always been hard. Being in a social group large enough that there are other mothers would solve the issue, largely.

[dsr_]

There's definitely one issue not mentioned here, and it even has a tie-in to software development.

You may recall the famous dictum "The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned." -- possibly Bruce Ediger. That turns out to be wrong. While human infants have an instinct to suckle on a nipple rubbed against their lower lip, human adults have no instincts about presenting the nipple, holding the infant, or anything else close by. All of that is learned behavior -- and bad positioning can be very painful.

If you don't have women breastfeeding around you to teach you, you're at a major disadvantage. It used to be the norm; now we have certified lactation consultants.

[klondike_klive]

If you can get hold of one. The one at our hospital was on holiday. We got so much different conflicting advice and brusque indifferent visits. We wanted to breastfeed to help the baby's microbiome because raised infection markers sparked a precautionary round of antibiotics for his first seven days. I was also on antibiotics as a baby in the seventies and have suffered awfully all my life with eczema, asthma and allergies. The doctor was very dismissive about our concerns. But the baby wouldn't latch, the doctors kept coming round saying they wanted to raise the baby's weight and would have to give him formula if we couldn't get him to feed. Horrible environment, hot as hell in a crowded and loud ward. Very dispiriting. Not surprised babies don't feed, not surprised many women give up. And to cap it all off it was "breastfeeding awareness week" in the hospital!

[colpabar]

It's against the rules to imply this but most of the comments here are written by people who don't read the articles.

[KoftaBob]

To add onto that, for a discussion board that prides itself on being more intellectually minded, there's a disappointing number of clickbaity/misleading headlines posted here on any given day.

[moeris]

Well, it's good I didn't imply that, then. People can miss things in articles, ignore them, or just not understand. All are valid reasons for missing/ignoring that part. My point is that the article doesn't mention it was easier to breastfeed back in the day, despite that being a kind of obvious point to make. So it's possible that they couldn't make the point because we don't know if breastfeeding was difficult back then.

[klyrs]

Technically, the rule is against accusing an individual of not reading the article. It's widely known that most of us smash reply before reading the third word of the headline -- that's why the site automatically strips words like "why" and "how" from titles; it really improves the chances that comments will be at least topical.

Note, snark like the above is explicitly forbidden.

[TchoBeer]

Most HN comments sections are like this, where the title is more a nucleation site for a discussion than commenting on the actual article.

[red-iron-pine]

On a work computer. Can't always access the articles.

Plus I'm looking to see if it is worth the risk -- a lot of articles are clickbate.

[Dowwie]

We don't talk about that here, you know this.

[nerdponx]

> I didn't see any implication that breastfeeding was better back in prehistory.

I think it's kind of implied by the causes that are hypothesized in the article. Hormones, nutrition, your schedule and routine around breastfeeding. Are these not all frequent topics on the subject of modern life and environmental pollution?