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A farmer?s wife breastfeeds her baby while two other women give water to a child from a pitcher. From The Five Senses Series by Fredrick Bloemaert, after Abraham Bloemaert, 1632-1670. CREDIT: F. Bloemaert/A. Bloemaert/N. Visscherimage/Rijks Museum/Public Domain

Women in a 19th-century Dutch farming village didn't breastfeed

13 April 2022

An analysis of bones from about 500 individuals who died between 1830 and 1867 in Middenbeemster suggests women in the dairy farming community did not breastfeed
Mother and daughter

Babies bond better with strangers when they can smell their mother

10 December 2021

Maternal body odour signals to babies that they can safely build relationships with other adults, a trait that may have evolved so that mothers can share the load of child rearing

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