Carrying, breast-feeding and working

Traditional cloth baby carriers allow for different ways of carrying the child, including those which give access to the mother’s breast, which is particularly useful for women to feed while working.

In Ecuador 76 in 100 adolescents are mothers and 34% of all women exclusively breast feed their babies until they are 6 months old and 19% for the first two years. They thus combine farm-work with breastfeeding on demand, something which typifies us as primates, and with periods of infant sleep.

Indigenous people are mainly included in the 36% of the Ecuadorian population who live from agriculture, and the women take charge of farming the “chacras” or plots.