Parents around the world have used some form of the pacifier for centuries. Depending on the time and place, they’ve been made of knotted rags dipped in water or honey, wooden beads, coral, ivory, bone, mango seeds, and plastic. Today, as The New York Times has reported, an estimated 75 percent of Western babies use pacifiers.
In some cultures, though, the caretaker is the pacifier. For example, the Aka, a tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers living in the Central African Republic and the Republic of the Congo, share comfort-nursing duties. WSU anthropologist Barry J. Hewlett, the editor of Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods: Evolutionary, Developmental, and Cultural Perspectives, says that Aka babies are breastfed an average of four times an hour, and sometimes as often as seven.
They are usually carried on the mother’s side, leaving the breast readily available for the infant to take when needed. If the mother is busy, the baby is typically passed to someone else, often the father or grandmother, who will offer up their own nipples to soothe the child.