It is now well established that breast-feeding has important health and contraceptive benefits and for this reason there is much concern about potential shifts in infant feeding regimes in the course of socio-economic development (VanLandingham, Trussell and Grummer-Strawn, 1991). Knowledge of infant feeding patterns in developing countries has been substantially expanded in recent decades as a result of the increased use of sample surveys to monitor the situation. In particular, the World Fertility Survey (WFS) in the 1970s and early 1980s routinely incorporated questions about breast-feeding; its successor in the 1980s and 1990s, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), has continued this tradition and has also commonly added additional questions about other aspects of infant feeding to its core questionnaire (Trussell and others, 1992). One important country for which such information has previously been lacking is Viet Nam since it did not participate in either of these programmes. Fortunately, it is now possible to redress this situation because two recent national surveys, the 1988 Viet Nam Demographic and Health Survey (VNDHS) and the 1994 Viet Nam Inter-censal Demographic Survey (VNICDS), provide the requisite data.