weaning

66:5.18Its mem­bers taught much that was lost dur­ing the con­fu­sion of sub­se­quent ages, never to be re­dis­cov­ered un­til the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. They taught man­kind that cook­ing, boil­ing and roast­ing, was a means of avoid­ing sick­ness; also that such cook­ing greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity and fa­cil­i­tated early wean­ing.

74:6.3The Adamic chil­dren did not take milk from an­i­mals when they ceased to nurse the mother’s breast at one year of age. Eve had ac­cess to the milk of a great va­ri­ety of nuts and to the juices of many fruits, and know­ing full well the chem­istry and en­ergy of these foods, she suit­ably com­bined them for the nour­ish­ment of her chil­dren un­til the ap­pear­ance of teeth.

123:0.1Ow­ing to the un­cer­tain­ties and anx­i­eties of their so­journ in Beth­le­hem, Mary did not wean the babe un­til they had ar­rived safely in Alexan­dria, where the fam­ily was able to set­tle down to a nor­mal life. They lived with kins­folk, and Joseph was well able to sup­port his fam­ily as he se­cured work shortly af­ter their ar­rival. He was em­ployed as a car­pen­ter for sev­eral months and then el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of fore­man of a large group of work­men em­ployed on one of the pub­lic build­ings then in pro­cess of con­struc­tion. This new ex­pe­ri­ence gave him the idea of be­com­ing a con­trac­tor and builder af­ter their re­turn to Naz­a­reth.

68:6.9Many races learned the tech­nique of abor­tion, and this prac­tice be­came very com­mon af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the taboo on child­birth among the un­mar­ried. It was long the cus­tom for a maiden to kill her off­spring, but among more civ­i­lized groups these il­le­git­i­mate chil­dren be­came the wards of the girl’s mother. Many prim­i­tive clans were vir­tu­ally ex­ter­mi­nated by the prac­tice of both abor­tion and in­fan­ti­cide. But re­gard­less of the dic­tates of the mores, very few chil­dren were ever de­stroyed af­ter hav­ing once been suck­led—ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion is too strong.

84:3.9The pro­vi­sion of milk for the young led to ear­lier wean­ing of ba­bies, hence to the bear­ing of more chil­dren by the moth­ers thus re­lieved of their some­times tem­po­rary bar­ren­ness, while the use of cow’s milk and goat’s milk greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity. Be­fore the herd­ing stage of so­ci­ety, moth­ers used to nurse their ba­bies un­til they were four and five years old.