BreastfeedingEvolved Nest

Educate Yourself About Breastfeeding’s Importance

Celebrating the embodied science laboratory.

By Darcia Narvaez, PhD

August is Breastfeeding Month in the USA but because of its vast importance for lifelong health and wellbeing, we should pay attention to supporting breastfeeding every month and day of the year. It’s a key part of the Nested Pathway.

In her wonderful book, Protecting Your Potential for Breastfeeding, Kelly M Durbin, IBCLC, writes that the most important factor in successful breastfeeding is a supportive community, not gizmos or special foods.

Mother and child need “a protected, nourishing environment.” What does that look like?

She lists 10 elements (plus one for USA) that actually work.

1. To build maternal confidence, mothers should be provided excellent prenatal breastfeeding education which shows how lactation works and why it is so important.

2. A supportive protective partner or family member who shares the emotional load.

3. Birthing experience with little medication intervention.

4. After the child exists the womb, immediate skin-to-skin contact which triggers the child’s natural feeding instincts. Placing the baby directly on the chest right after birth stabilizes their system and triggers their natural feeding instincts.

5. Protection of the first hour or more of the child’s life. Mother and child calm each other and bond during this golden hour, facilitating successful breastfeeding.

6. Focus on direct feeding in the early days, responding to infant direction, established a robust milk supply.

7. At night, keep infants safely within arm’s reach, making overnight feeding convenient.

8. A pediatrician who “understands, respects, and actively protects the breastfeeding relationship.”

9. Support from experienced parents who will encourage and offer support if there are issues that arise.

10. A welcoming family and community environment where mother and child feel safe and supported.

11. Paid parental leave. Paid leave allows mother to heal and establish a healthy breastfeeding relationship with the Infant. Virtually every country in the world provides paid leave, except the USA. Is it any wonder we have epidemics of mental and physical and social disorder?

You can educate yourself about the importance of breastfeeding and breast milk by reading one or more of these posts:

  1. Breastfeeding In The USA—A Little History, Part 1 Of 2
  2. Breastfeeding’s Importance—What Science Tells Us, Part 2 Of…
  3. What Do You Know About Breastfeeding?
  4. How Long Should Breastfeeding Last? The Science Says…
  5. Safe Infant Sleep And Breastfeeding Are Partners
  6. Breast Milk Is Medicine For Babies
  7. Your Assumptions About Infant Formula Are Probably Wrong
  8. TREMENDOUS Benefits of Doing What is Normal: Breastfeeding
  9. Breast Milk Keeps Time And May Set Baby’s Clock
  10. Breastfeeding Moms Face Illegal Discrimination At Work
  11. New Book, Unlatched, Explores Whether Breastfeeding Is Vital
  12. The Myth Of “Breastfeeding Is Optional”
  13. PODCAST: The Tremendous Benefits of Breast Milk: An Evolved Nest…
Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Darcia Narvaez is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She is the president of Kindred World and the co-founder of the public and professional educational outreach project The Evolved Nest Initiative whose nonprofit mission is to share her science research into developing appropriate baselines for lifelong human wellness by meeting the biological needs of infants. This wellness-informed baseline is imperative at this time as the United States ranks 41st out of 41 developed countries in public policies that support families.

In a 2020 analysis of top scientists, Narvaez emerged in the top 2% of scientists worldwide. Of the eight million scientists in the world, the analysis concerned those who had at least five articles published in scientific journals between 1996 and 2017-- over six million scientists. Individuals were ranked according to various criteria, including number of citations of their work.

In 2022, she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS), the largest international body of professional scientists in the world and publisher of the prestigious journal Science. Narvaez was honored for her distinguished contributions illuminating typical and atypical development in terms of well-being, morality and sustainable wisdom. Narvaez examines how early life experience — the “evolved nest” — influences moral functioning and well-being in children and adults. She integrates evolutionary, anthropological, neurobiological, clinical, developmental and education sciences in her work. The election of AAAS fellows is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers.

Narvaez’s book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, was chosen for the 2017 Expanded Reason Award from among more than 360 total entries from 170 universities and 30 countries. Narvaez received the prize, including a substantial monetary award, at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City on September 27, 2017. The book also received the William James Award from the American Psychological Association in 2015.

Narvaez hosted interdisciplinary conferences at the University of Notre Dame regarding early experience and human development in 2010, 2012, and 2014. In 2016 she organized a conference on Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous KnowHow for Global Flourishing. (Click on the links to see the full conferences in video on the Evolved Nest's YouTube Channel.)

She is the author or editor of numerous books and articles, see The Science page for listings.

She is the president of the venerable American nonprofit, Kindred World, a contributing editor to Kindred, the first global eco-parenting magazine, an advisory board member of Attachment Parenting International and the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health, APPPAH.

Her recent book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom (2014), won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association, as well as the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. She is former executive editor of the Journal of Moral Education.

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