Oh yeah, the hygienic hypothesis. Did you know, Ann, that there are about just as many clinical studies telling you this hypothesis is wrong? Which leaves me just as clueless as I was before.
I'm sure cleanliness is not the only, and quite possibly not the most important, reason for why people are so much more allergic these days than they were back in the sixties when I was a kid. (However, allergies existed back in the sixties, too. But back then allergies were collectively known as "hay fever", because it was taken for granted that an allergic person was allergic to pollen only. A small boy I knew back in the early sixities almost died because it took his doctors that long to realize that the kid was allergic to nuts. Honestly, a nut allergy... who in the early sixities could have imagined that such an allergy was even possible?)
My sister-in-law and my brother are both allergic, so any children they had would be genetically disposed to have allergies. But Ingela, my sister-in-law, had heard that you can reduce the risk for allergies in your children if the mother is very careful with what she eats while she is nursing her babies. So while Ingela was nursing my niece and my nephew, she didn't eat anything that contained milk, eggs or fish. And neither my niece, who is eighteen, nor my nephew, who is sixteen, has ever had any allergies.
Ann