Breastfeeding rates in the U.S. are socially patterned. Previous research has documented startling racial and socioeconomic disparities in infant feeding practices. However, much of the empirical evidence regarding the effects of breastfeeding on long-term child health and wellbeing does not adequately address the high degree of selection into breastfeeding. To address this important shortcoming, we employ sibling comparisons in conjunction with 25 years of panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to approximate a natural experiment and more accurately estimate what a particular child’s outcome would be if he/she had been differently fed during infancy. Results from standard multiple regression models suggest that children aged 4 to 14 who were breast- as opposed to bottle-fed did significantly better on 10 of the 11 outcomes studied. Once we restrict analyses to siblings and incorporate within-family fixed effects, estimates of the association between breastfeeding and all but one indicator of child health and wellbeing dramatically decrease and fail to maintain statistical significance. Our results suggest that much of the beneficial long-term effects typically attributed to breastfeeding, per se, may primarily be due to selection pressures into infant feeding practices along key demographic characteristics such as race and socioeconomic status.
I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. all the brou-ha-ha about breast feeding is better (according to this study) is only when practiced among a certain ethnic and socio-economic group?
Thousands of years of breast feeding and it’s only good if certain groups do it?
I need a drink.
Okay.Maybe I’m just a big boob,but this study makes about as much sense to me as an Ipso-Reid poll. What am I missing? And just which ethnic/socio-economic group is doing so much better after centries of breast feeding only?
the definition of f44ked up
I guess breastfeeding is for suckers…
OK kids – here we go. Rich people breast feed so rich kids do better in a whack of areas. Poor people breast feed less and coincidentally they do poorer in a whack of areas. Breast feeding might be considered irrelevant compared to the sociological effect of being rich.
The statement that university education leads to better outcomes might be similarly tainted because rich and smart people are probably destined for better outcomes despite their education.
Its the old argument of confusing cause and effect where there is a correlation.
Problem with that scar is that many “rich” moms don’t breast feed because they can afford high priced formula. Their breasts don’t take quite the toll but at the same time they look down on others who do the old natural breast feeding. My wife has experienced this attitude, Dave Rutherford even talked about it a few years ago on his show and there was an avalanche of moms who called in admitting the same thing.
My opinion is that unless you have a very logical and rational reason for not breast feeding, you are in the wrong(in general, not you scar). And besides some moms making pregnancy an excuse to binge eat, consuming real and healthy whole foods is a must.
I suspect that is what they are trying to say as far as demographics are concerned, but like I mentioned there is an elitist anti-breastfeeding group out there.
The contraceptive effects of breastfeeding are well known in more traditional cultures. Wealthy women had ‘wet nurses’.
I understand the conclusion to be: If all other things are equal, breastfeeding vs other feeding methods (e.g., formula) make “little” difference in children’s development. (Repeat, if all other things are equal….).
Folks, it’s just a bunch of gobbledygook which is pretty much the status of a lot of these kinds of studies which try to measure things using proxies and subjective criteria. They are meaningless. If the conclusions are correct (and I think that they are), they are still purely accidental and incidental to their “study”.
Where’s Kate Upton when you really need her?
That may be true, but, in the US, the CDC finds a significant correlation between income and breastfeeding:
“Breastfeeding rates in 1999-2006 were significantly higher among those with higher income (74%) compared with those who had lower income (57%).”
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db05.htm
“there is an elitist anti-breastfeeding group out there”
So ‘wet-nurses’ are making a comeback?
The human species has been breast feeding since the dawn of time; so I expect the “elitist anti-breastfeeding group” will shortly be up for a Darwin Award as they will have self selected themselves out of the gene pool.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Yeah well, then there’s all that rumble about the “peanut allergy” kids were not breastfed…..but brought up on formula….
The jury still seems to be out on that one but there’s little evidence and actually it seems they don’t have a clue. One thing I do know is that when I was a youngster in the late 50’s and through the sixties, in all my school years I never heard of even one kid that had nut allergies.
http://www.marchofdimes.com/pregnancy/peanut-allergies-children-and-pregnancy.aspx#
That’s because today it is considered hip if your child has a nut allergy, or a fruit allergy, or a gluten allergy, or some other damn allergy.
It’s like a badge of honour among middle-class lefties, and it is also fashionable. It is a talking point at cocktail parties – “My kid is allergic to this or that”…”Oooooohhhh, how interesting!!” will be the response.
The left wets their pants with excitement at the thought that they can impose their dumb ideas on the masses, and allergies fit right into that dream. That is why schools are nut free, perfume free, everything free, except free of stupid left-wing ideas.
In the case of my kids, the only thing they are allergic to is leftist doctrine.
So the “rich” use free food for their babeis and the poor pay a lot of money to feed their children. That might partly explain why the rich are rich and he poor are poor.
I read this as a takedown of the breast-feeding mafia. In today’s culture, mothers are brow-beaten into breast-feeding by do-gooders and even the medical establishment. If you do not breast-feed your child you are a heartless monster and a bad mother. I have seen new mothers overwhelmed with stress and depression on the birth of a new baby, because the hungry baby keeps crying and their milk hasn’t come in. But the mantra is that you can’t offer formula! Formula is really the milk of the devil! So you can just suffer with your hungry child until your milk comes in. Even if it takes a day or two. As if birthing isn’t stressful and demanding enough that we need to heap a whole other pile of emotional guilt on it.
It’s awful. And just like the global-warming crowd, the breast-feeding mafia wraps itself in the mantle of science. It’s all very sketchy the studies they use, but if you believe the hype, if your child is breast-fed versus bottle-fed, he will be smarter, healthier, handsomer and more successful.
In fact, I won’t be surprised if card-carrying mafia members show up to troll the comments – they cannot tolerate any dissension on the subject…
If that is the case, the establishment has done a complete 180 in the past 10 years. Like I posted earlier, my wife and many other mom’s in Alberta were looked down upon for breastfeeding.
One thing these recent studies do not discuss is that breastfeeding is protective against breast cancer. The numbers vary according to different studies but almost all that address this issue agree that breast feeding offers significant protection. So, yes, if a mother has sufficient premium formula, access to clean water and reliable refrigeration, then her children will have similar health outcomes to breastfed children. But, she will not have the decreased rate of breast cancer that a breast feeding mother has.
Double, or gazillion thumbs up on your post!
Unfortunately we are losing the wisdom of past mothers on how to feed infants with home-made formulas instead of expensive store-bought ones. Grandma showed us how she prepared cow’s milk and a bit of sugar in a sanitary way to feed her babies. Her help kept our first born alive while the hospital nursery only advised that “Yes, it was normal for him to scream and cry all day for the 3 days when he was here but every woman can breastfeed. Just keep trying.”.
He did scream and cry with colic for months, but thanks to Grandma, he gained weight and outgrew it. And thankfully, we had more children who were breastfed at least for a few months, switched to Grandma’s formula and then to solids. Grandma’s advice for when to introduce cereal, veggies, meat, eggs, etc was followed, experts ignored. All our kids are healthy, smart, beautiful and contributing citizens. No bias at all!