Date published: 2011/05/10
The BBC says:
Children who are breastfed for four months or more develop fewer behaviour problems, Oxford researchers say.
The study, involving 10,000 mothers and their babies and in journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, says that may be because of the make-up of breast milk.
Or, it says, breastfeeding may lead to better mother-baby interaction.
Breastfeeding is already associated with other health benefits for babies, including lower rates of infection and less obesity in later life.
Researchers looked at the feeding habits of 10,037 mothers and their babies involved in a large study known as the Millennium Cohort Study.
The mothers were asked to assess problems in their children by the age of five, including anxiousness and clinginess, restlessness, and lying or stealing.
Only 6% of children who were breastfed showed signs of behaviour problems, compared with 16% of children who were formula-fed.
Mothers who breastfeed tend to be older, better educated, and from a higher socio-economic background, which may contribute towards fewer problems in their children's behaviour.
But even after the researchers, from the Universities of Oxford, Essex, York and University College London, adjusted their figures to take that into account, they still found there was a 30% greater risk of behavioural problems among formula-fed children.
The ruling elite has for decades been demonising women who do not breastfeed their babies, and this is just yet another research effort aimed at that. And yet the effect they have found is rather small. So the headline figures sound dramatic: "Only 6% of children who were breastfed showed signs of behaviour problems, compared with 16% of children who were formula-fed."
But that comparison is not adjusted for the fact that "respectable" middle class mothers will breastfeed more often, and it seems (or they will claim) that their children are better behaved. And after controlling for this, there was still "a 30% greater risk of behavioural problems among formula-fed children". Well that pushes the 6% up to 8%. Another way of putting this is that if you breastfeed, then your child is 94% likely to have few behavioural problems whereas if you do not then this is "only" 92%. Should anyone really care?
And this is assuming that they really have controlled properly for other determining factors. And it also seems to have relied on the mothers doing the assessment, which is an inherently flawed idea. All in all, this does not seem to be a very significant piece of research.
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