This article surveys the effects of the role of women in subsistence activities upon infant feeding practices in 83 societies for which information in available in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. In 30 of the 83 supplementary feeding is begun before the age of 1 month in 26 between 1 and 6 months and in 27 after 6 months. A previous discussion of the division of labor by sex done in 1970 stated that the degree to which women participate in subsistence activities depends upon the compatibility of those activities with simultaneous child care responsibilities. The present study qualifies this statement by showing that child care responsibilities may be adjusted to accommodate the mothers subsistence activities. It also indicates that womens participation in the subsistence economy not only has implications for high morbidity and mortality but may indeed foster higher fertility. Busy women may be returning to fecundity earlier their postpartum amenorrhea having been shortened by very early partial breast feeding.
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Sara B. Nerlove (1974) studied this question.