"It takes a lot of slow to grow."

Got a question today from a Facebook friend, and it started me thinking. She wanted to know why she should leave her baby breastmilk in a sippy cup when she went out, rather than the bottle that he likes. Everyone seemed to think she should leave him with a cup.

That question is more complicated than it seems at first. Breastmilk from a bottle is not going to encourage tooth decay the way formula from a bottle does. The advice about rigidly weaning from a bottle by a certain age seems to be aimed at formula-fed babies. So, easy answer, right? Keep using the bottle. On the other hand, our culture won't let babies and children grown up at their own pace, preferring to push them jog-trot through every developmental stage of their lives. One-year-olds are expected to self-soothe in the way that much older children are able to.
Children haven't changed from the 1950's, or even the 1970's, when they slept in cribs for several years, and had naps until they went to school. Perhaps too much emphasis was placed on getting children to bed, early enough, and long enough, but at least children weren't expected to behave nicely while they shopped at Walmart at 10 p.m. So while they may have been expected to give up their bottles by a certain age, everyone knew they were little even thirty or forty years ago.
What is our preoccupation with making children grow up, and quickly give up their childish ways of coping with life? Is there something innately moral about controlling every aspect of a baby or child's life, leaving no room for their opinions? Is this just the continued fall-out of the Puritans and the industrial revolution? Do we have to give up being who we are as biological beings and mammals, in order to have paved streets and running water? If we let our babies nurse as long as they want, and toilet train whenever, will this be the end of civilization as we know it?
I just read an article about breastfeeding in Mongolia, where breastmilk is revered, and the best wrestlers are said to have nursed until they were six. No one plots to have the baby off the breast by a certain age, or puzzles over what the baby wants when it's unhappy. In goes the breast, no matter what. The description of two moms stopping a fight between their two-year-olds by hiking up their shirts and waving their breasts enticingly was just hysterical. I have seen moms employ similar strategies, although more discreetly, and they weren't living in a yurt.
It seems that anything that makes a baby feel good, like sucking on whatever it wants, whenever it wants, is looked on with suspicion in North America. So of course it would make sense to give a cup instead of a bottle, because they are not as satisfying. This is a cultural thing, as well as a response to the scientific evidence about bottles of formula causing tooth decay. The idea that we have to make babies and children give up something they enjoy, seems to be part of our culture, as if they won't grow up unless we make them do it. Other cultures are more relaxed about this, and often they are cultures where life is very hard, yet babies grow up to be strong, emotionally resilient adults.
Maybe if we babied our babies when they were babies, they would grow up to be strong, emotionally resilient adults as well. Some psychologists believe that a major task of parenting is to teach babies and children to be hopeful, that if they look, and wait, and are patient, something good will come along. How easy it is to teach this hopefulness of something good by beginning with the promise of what is hidden under mother's shirt.