New mothers get it from all sides when it comes to how they should feed their newborn—and older—offspring. The quasi-militant breastfeeding contingent has been particularly vocal in recent years, including initiatives from government agencies and the American Academy of Pediatrics, exalting the benefits of the breast to the highest echelon. But a new study from the Social Science & Medicine journal calls into question the benefits of the boob over the bottle, stating that claims of breastfeeding superiority may have been overstated.
Ohio State University assistant professor Cynthia Colen, the lead author of the study, looked at the health statistics for over 8,000 children between the ages of 4 and 14. What makes Colen's study unique was that 25% of her subjects were "discordant sibling pairs," meaning one child was breastfed, the other bottle-fed. The study measured 11 outcomes commonly looked at in breastfeeding studies, including BMI, obesity, asthma, parental attachment and hyperactivity, as well as "scores predicting academic achievement" in subjects like vocabulary, math ability and scholastic intelligence.
When looking at the data as a whole, the results agreed with earlier studies that concluded breast-fed children had better outcomes than their bottle-fed counterparts on things like BMI, hyperactivity, reading recognition and other measures. However, when the data was restricted to the discordant sibling pairs, the "scores reflecting breast-feeding's positive effects on 10 of the 11 indicators of child health and well-being were closer to zero and not statistically significant." Meaning any outliers could be attributed to chance. On the flip side, children who were breast-fed were at a higher risk for asthma than those who were given formula.
"Many previous studies suffer from selection bias," explains Colen. "They either do not or cannot statistically control for factors such as race, age, family income, mother's employment—things we know that can affect both breast-feeding and health outcomes." Colen doesn't say that breastfeeding isn't beneficial, but suggests that more time and money should be focused on long-term solutions for moms of all demographics, including "subsidized day care, better maternity leave policies and more employment opportunities for low-income mothers that pay a living wage."
For moms who aren't able to breastfeed, the study should hopefully offer some comfort backed up with facts. "We need to take a much more careful look at what happens past that first year of life and understand that breast-feeding might be very difficult, even untenable, for certain groups of women," says Colen. "Rather than placing the blame at their feet, let's be more realistic about what breast-feeding does and doesn't do."
[via Slate]
