"Family-led" weaning

I had originally planned on getting as close to child-led weaning as a working mother possibly can. However, I gave that up before a year as night-wakings for nursing were hurting my abilty to work during the day. I opted to night-wean just after a year, after pump-weaning at 11.5 months. Since then, I have allowed my children to nurse roughly on-demand during the waking hours of the day when I am home.

Now I am finding that nursing so much is starting to chafe. Right now, almost all of my precious time with my children is spent nursing. I think complete but gradual weaning is the solution that will be the easiest on everybody, so I am moving to "mother-encouraged" weaning: Gentle weaning mainly accomplished through distractions that doesn't push the child very hard. I'm doing this now because the girls are in a less-clingy phase, and I suspect that if I don't wean in the next month or two then we'll be in a clingy phase again. Then I'll have to wait 3 or 4 months longer to have such an easy chance to wean again. I don't really want to nurse that much longer.

I've been nursing my twins now for 21 months, and think "extended" nursing should be considered normal and weaning before 14 months should be considered "early weaning". This isn't to say that there is anything wrong with weaning before 14 months - I do believe that there can be excellent reasons to wean early. However, I think that later weaning and child-led weaning should be more common and would love to see them normalized.

At the same time, I find the "all or nothing" attitude that some radical lactivists express towards weaning to be off-putting. I don't think child-led weaning is always the right decision for a family. I think of the style of weaning used in my family as "family-led" weaning: Every one gets to have their opinion heard, and the best choice for the entire family is selected. There is no pressure on Mom to keep nursing no matter what. The only pressure is to keep nursing as long as the reasons to continue outweigh the reasons to quit.