Social Learning and Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices

Patterns in infant and young child feeding behaviors have been the focus of much anthropological, nutritional, and demographic exploration because of their relationship to morbidity and mortality. Researchers often label these patterns as cultural, which, by definition, means that the patterns are linked to ideational factors that are shared within cultural groups. Although widely discussed, empirical tests of the shared aspect of this theory are lacking. We hypothesized a broad match between attitudes about early child feeding practices and feeding practices at the population level. We also hypothesized that proxy indicators of interaction frequency between mothers would predict sharing in responses to a set of statements about infant feeding. Data from four different ethnic groups living in two sites in rural Tanzania are examined to test these hypotheses. The results indicate that mothers' attitudes do not correspond to current public health recommendations for infant and young child feeding. Moreover, site-and ethnic-group-level differences emerge that may be consistent with the social learning hypothesis. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.