Societal perceptions and lived experience: Infant feeding practices in premodern Japan

Objectives A change in how children were treated and valued occurred in premodern Japan, as popularized ideas of an inheritance‐based family system led to more careful and affectionate child‐rearing practices by lower social‐status groups. A number of books were written, advising that breastfeeding should last approximately 3 years. The objective of this study is to reconstruct and compare breastfeeding and weaning practices before and after the...