Mum breastfeeds seven year old

... since the benefits are no longer nutritional, I wonder what the child is dependent on, here?

She's dependent on the closeness and comfort. Anything wrong with that?

John, all my kids are dependent on closeness with and comfort from me and from my husband (their dad). That can be accomplished in numerous ways -- it's not like nursing is the only source for this.

As Salamander noted above in Sal's own family, my kids -- all self-weaned -- simply weren't interested in nursing after awhile. I agree with Salamander's conclusion that the two children in this video were likely encouraged to nurse, based on the mother's demeanor. She spoke at one point about how she couldn't even get dressed because her girls would be wanting to touch her breasts, and they had to set some boundaries. These are healthy boundaries. A mother does need some autonomy in her life, after all -- the simple privilege of being able to put on one's clothes without little hands fondling one's more sensitive body parts. No matter how much they love her breasts and how much they love to nurse, they are old enough to afford their mother the dignity of being able to dress without interruption, as I am sure you will agree.

I am a strong advocate for breastfeeding and self-weaning. I have absolutely no "set age" in mind for when a child should be "properly" weaned. But that doesn't mean that the act of breastfeeding is *always* devoid of dysfunctional behavior or manipulation by either the mother or the child. The potential exists, even if it's a very remote possibility.

I'm in no way qualified to make a 100% accurate analysis of this particular family, but on my second viewing of the video, I was struck by the children's attitude. This could be due to lousy editing on the documentary-maker's part, but the kids really seemed to look at their mother not as a person who deserved dignity and respect, but as a vending machine for their own personal satisfaction. I felt their attitude was dehumanizing toward their mother, and I guessed that the mother had not only allowed this but had inadvertently fostered it, to the point where her own personal sense of modesty and natural desire for privacy when performing personal bodily care were heavily compromised.

As the mother of daughters, I am sensitive to the modesty issue in particular. Our secular society around us is horribly immodest, and it's the girls who suffer most from this. Boys, too, but girls bear more physical, emotional and spiritual risks from the pressure to be immodest. And since girls learn the necessity and value of modesty from their mothers first and foremost, I think a situation in which the mother has sacrificed her own modesty for the children's personal, physical satisfaction is setting the girls up to make some significantly dangerous choices once they hit puberty.

And I am *not* talking about refraining from breastfeeding in public or anything like that. My view is that anywhere it's okay for an adult or child to consume food, it's okay for a baby to nurse...and sometimes babys get to nurse where adults ought not eat. I am speaking specifically of the modesty of being able to say when and where one's body is touched and for what reason. This mother appears to have lost that and had to try to regain it by forbidding her girls from touching her breasts with their hands (*not* nursing, you will note) while she was trying to get dressed in the morning.