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Yeah, breastfeeding can take 4-6 hours a day. It's no simple thing. And if the mother is working, it's hard. Even pumping milk takes time. Women who can afford
by Pharylon 9y ago
Yeah, breastfeeding can take 4-6 hours a day. It's no simple thing. And if the mother is working, it's hard. Even pumping milk takes time.
Women who can afford to breastfeed exclusively are at least middle class, usually upper-middle class. That comes with a whole set of advantages and other correlations. Studies that try to figure out breast feeding advantages have to try and control for these things, but it's hard.
Here's what we know for sure: Breast feeding reduces infections in the child. It's a small, but detectable amount. And I do mean a small amount. Between six mothers that exclusively breast feed an infant for six months, on average one of those children will have one fewer infection during that time.
Everything else is up in the air, and if it has an effect on anything else (like intelligence) it's tiny. Save your energy for reading to the child and playing games with them, which definitely helps intelligence.
- euyyn 9y agoYour sibling comment by /u/Nokinside says almost the opposite. "Reduced child mortality and health benefits that extend into adulthood".
- fsloth 9y ago"Women who can afford to breastfeed exclusively are at least middle class, usually upper-middle class." This is highly country sensitive. In countries with civilized parents leave everyone can afford to breast feed their children.
- logfromblammo 9y agoAlso, teach your babies a subset of ASL, for words like "more", "eat", "drink", "milk", "water", "done", "diaper change", and "sleep". They can form word associations before they are able to speak intelligibly, and it really helps the parent figure out why TF the kid is crying.
- bdamm 9y agoLearn Dunstan baby language and you don't even have to teach your kid anything. We did teach our kid "more", which was useful.
- Afton 9y agoI taught my daughter about 100 words of ASL (English with and ASL lexicon, to be honest about it). Turned out super useful since she was a late talker (my second child, who I also tried to teach ASL was an early talker and thought ASL was stupid). In my opinion, it's mostly useful because it's super cute. Typically kids who can sign 'milk' or 'more' can also indicate with grunts, grabs and reaching what the problem is. But it's super cute.
- wahern 9y agoTurned out super useful since she was a late talker That might not be a coincidence. There's some evidence that kids who use sign language tend to talk later. Maybe because there's less incentive to verbalize. It's not a language delay, though.
- Afton 9y agoPretty sure the causation worked the other way, but it's hardly a repeatable experiment in my case.
- clamprecht 9y agoI have to disagree your assumption about breastfeeding being usually upper-middle class. Maybe you're just talking about the US? But in Argentina at least (maybe more of Latin America too), it's common to see lower/middle-class women breastfeeding on the city bus.
- silencio 9y agothe stats in the US are a bit twisted, in small part due to our terrible family leave offerings, but largely due to WIC providing formula to low income families that end up formula feeding to go back to work (lol if these types of jobs provide actual time to pump, even if they could pump) or because they don't get anywhere near as much support with breastfeeding difficulties.
- JamesBarney 9y agoSave your energy for reading to the child and playing games with them, which definitely helps intelligence. Are you sure? It was my understanding that there is pretty much no intervention that provably increases IQ. Some interventions have small effects for several years but none persist past 3-4 years post intervention. - Except getting rid of things that low IQ, like reducing exposure to lead, not drinking or smoking while pregnant etc...
- Pharylon 9y agoEhhh... yeah, you're right, in that there's no known single prescription/intervention for increasing intelligence. But we do know that among siblings there's a correlation between being the first child and being the most intelligent. It seems parental bandwidth is important. So maybe not necessarily reading (as I said), but just spending time with them. Also, side note, IQ is garbage and not a good measure of intelligence.
- JamesBarney 9y agoI don't know if I'm familiar with an intelligence measure that is superior to IQ. What would you suggest? But the first born effect could be parental bandwidth but it could also be other effects. Age of parent, interactions between siblings, etc...
- ebfd 9y agoWhat metric has better predictive power than IQ?
- rayiner 9y agoDrinking lightly while pregnant also has shown to have no effect on IQ.
- tptacek 9y agoTo me, this is the craziest development in our understanding of gestation. We live very close to a hospital with a popular birth center, and someone I know came to our house when they were in labor to see if they'd need to check in. Less than an hour before the kid was born, they were on my couch drinking a beer. I guess I'm all for it? But compared to when our kids were born, it was jarring.