A leading evolutionary biologist has put forward the theory that an infant’s tendency to wake up in the night may have been a Darwinian tactic to make mothers breastfeed more, thus reducing their fertility and limiting the number of siblings that will be born, which in turn improved a child’s chances of survival.
Breastfeeding acts as a natural contraceptive during the first six months after birth, stopping women from menstruating. Encouraging the effect would have been beneficial for our ancestors, because the fewer siblings one had, the more competition there would be for scarce resources, and the lower the risk of infectious disease spreading, argues Professor David Haig, of Harvard University.
Read more: Babies evolved to wake new mothers in the middle of the night as a survival tactic, claims Harvard biologist The Independent 10/4/14
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