10 ms·

Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

103 points by datashovel 12y ago

sjwright 12y ago
While the article does acknowledge that the study only shows correlation and not causation, it doesn't suggest what seems to me the most intuitively obvious alternative hypothesis. We know that increased rates of mental stimuli and social interaction are beneficial to a growing brain. Perhaps breastfeeding correlates with parents that have more free time to interact with their child.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- learc83 12y ago
  Researchers have considered your hypothesis. There have been many attempts to eliminate confounding variables in these studies (this doesn't mean that they were necessarily successful in doing so, but they did think about it). Often they attempt to control for differences in parenting styles, which should cover how much time they spend interacting with their child. Also until 6-10 months, babies can't hold their own bottles, so someone is probably still interacting with them (unless you prop up the bottle and leave the baby alone, which is possible but not recommended).
  - sjwright 12y ago
    Bottles can be held by disinterested third parties. Boobs rarely can.
- vitobcn 12y ago
  The actual paper contains much more information than this BBC article. I'm not sure why they didn't link to it, but here is the original paper at the Lancet [1] as well as the full-text pdf file [2]. [1]: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X%2815%2970002-1/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-10... [2]: http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/langlo/PIIS2214-109X(15)70002-1.pdf http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/langlo/PIIS2214-109X(...
cssmoo 12y ago
Maybe but it certainly is linked to epic levels of smugness and superiority complexes on the part of the parents and healthcare system. At least here in the UK. My oldest is quite intelligent. We've had "I bet she was breast fed" more times than I can count. The reply is "no, it's a combination of genetics and nurture"...
- learc83 12y ago
  Even the most generous estimates are that breastfeeding adds a few IQ points. Definitely not noticeable for an individual. However, at the population level, which is what the healthcare system is dealing with, that's a huge deal. Imagine if the average IQ of the entire population were shifted up by several points.
  - trhway 12y ago
    >Imagine if the average IQ of the entire population were shifted up by several points. this is exactly what China has done during recent decades through the one child policy. And i'd say it starts to show.
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    Isn’t this the effect of removing lead from the environment? People with high IQ’s don’t see the value of a few more IQ points (marginal utility), but when you have an IQ of around 80 then every point makes a huge difference.
  - dagw 12y ago
    Imagine if the average IQ of the entire population were shifted up by several points. I guess it depends on the starting point. I imagine that shifting the average from 85->90 would have a much bigger effect than shifting from 105->110. Most studies seem to show a pretty sharp diminishing returns when correlating IQ points to just about any measure of 'success'.
- brogrammer90 12y ago
  Now imagine those "genetics and nurture" AND breast feeding..
datashovel 12y ago
I definitely take studies like this with a grain of salt, though I do find them interesting. This one does appear to be from a sufficiently large sample size. Besides this, though, I find it interesting that humans feel they can sufficiently reverse engineer breast milk to replicate the health benefits. Not saying at all that eventually this won't be possible or probable. But the "original formula" has gone through at least tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of years of evolution. From this respect I'm in complete awe that we have this nature-given tool, and astonished that more humans don't do this for their children.
- jonah 12y ago
  > sufficiently reverse engineer breast milk to replicate the health benefits ...In much the same way a BigMac and Coke replicates food.
- aikah 12y ago
  > I definitely take studies like this with a grain of salt as everybody should, the problem is the media publishing these stories know that the only thing people read are the headlines. > Experts say the results, while not conclusive ... The article says one thing and its opposite. The goal here isn't to inform but to distract. Absolutely no conclusion can be made out of reading this article.
  - colordrops 12y ago
    What exactly is wrong with this study?
    - aikah 12y ago
      Because you read the study ? there isn't even a link to the study in the article. The article is garbage.
jtheory 12y ago
I'm honestly totally in favor of breast-feeding, when it's a reasonable option. I don't want anyone to avoid breast-feeding because they think (as was believed for quite a while, actually) that formula is better. But this line from the OP slightly freaked me out -- just for acknowledging the possibility: > But they say mothers should still have a choice about whether or not to do it. Have they forgotten the abortion debate? There are some relevant points in there, even if formula-feeding actually cost 50 IQ points, reliably. But it's more than just that. Parenting is demanding and unavoidably full of compromises, for just about all parents. Most people just think in overly-simplified terms of what's "right" and "wrong" in parenting decisions, which means that the mother who can't breastfeed because she's got mastitis gets to suffer both from the pain and from guilt of imagining her child's IQ points decreasing; nice. But really -- feeling guilty whenever you see your child is probably quite a bit worse than any harm not breast-feeding them may or may not cause. I feel like there should be just a list of priorities, for parents to review when they're choosing their individual compromises, and at the top of the list would be "dedicate time when you're feeling well to your child". Then you can spend that time actually being supportive, kind, fair, consistent, and all of those things that go out the window when you're feeling awful. And you may be feeling awful if you're compromised away too much of your sleep, if you're in pain, if you've faked being happy for too long, because of some article you read about something that was "right" or "wrong" for your child. All of these other things -- like breast-feeding -- should come below that. Kids don't want/need more time, full-stop; they want/need more time with parents who are actually doing okay.
- datashovel 12y ago
  Guilt can certainly be an unfortunate consequence. Much like how a blind person must feel every day as they're reminded how difficult life is for those who can't see. Empowering people with information about ways they can improve the chances their offspring will have in life is definitely the most important message I got from the article.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  If we want to encourage more women to breast-feed then tell them how much weight they will lose. Based on my observations breast-feeding is like having your own personal liposuction machine. More seriously we need to help women breast-feed if they want without making them feel like failures or bad mothers if they don’t. It is a hard problem, but one that is worth trying to come up with a solution.
paulfr 12y ago
Just 2 weeks ago, I won a machine learning contest with a $20,000 prize pool where the goal was to predict the IQ of a child at age 7, based on various biological measurements and demographic indicators. The data includes whether a child was breastfed. After reading the article I did some very quick computations and my finding based on the model I developed is that children who were not breastfed have an IQ impairment in the 1-3 IQ points range, after accounting for confounding factors. This is very consistent with the results published here. Compared to this study, I believe the methodology I'm using is more powerful for three reasons: - much larger sample size: the dataset I have access to comprises 12015 children, compared to 3493 for the study - a larger set of confounding factors is accounted for: notably, the data includes height and weight measurements at up to five points in time - confounding factors are fully accounted for, rather than hand-waved away. This is a complex model based on random forests and linear model, and the results are entirely cross-validated. Stay tuned for more detailed computations. I will also ask the organizers for the exact definition of breastfeeding used. --- Edit: On the other hand, the study is still very appealing because according to the authors, there is little correlation between demographics and breastfeeding in Brazil, whereas the validity of the effect I'm reporting is dependent on whether the demographic model is powerful enough to remove the correlation. Still, I believe most of the correlation is easy to remove, and it isn't clear that there aren't subtle demographic effects even in Brazil. In particular, the proportion of participants with missing IQ data seems to decrease with duration of breastfeeding, and I don't know if they have an explanation for that.
- johnloeber 12y ago
  Wow, that's very interesting work. I'd love to see a write-up -- not just with respect to breastfeeding, but generally on your findings.
  - paulfr 12y ago
    I found a big improvement to my model just after the contest was over, so I made a proposal to develop the improved model and do some more in-depth analysis. I'm currently waiting for their reply! If they accept I'll have an opportunity to look deeper -- it's one thing to develop an efficient model, but fully exploiting it in order to gain a better understanding of the data takes some work. A limitation of these contests is that you're rewarded for producing a very efficient model, but there is very little emphasis on analysis of your model once you built it. I think it's a shame, because the person who built the model is often in the best position to have a good intuition of both the dataset and why the model had to be built that way. I've been considering opening a blog, but I haven't found time to do so yet. Briefly, the purpose of the contest wasn't to understand the effect of breastfeeding, but to understand how important normal child growth is to mental development. They included several scenarios: with all data available, with demographic data removed, and with demographic data and growth curves removed. Unfortunately, IQ is so overwhemingly affected by demographic that the scenarios without demographic data devolved into a game of extracting all the demographic data that was leaked by non-demographic variables. And when demographic data is available, more than 90% of the variance extracted by the model comes from demographic data rather than biological measurements! It's really disheartening to think that depending on the social setting you come from, you start with an IQ of 85 or 115 -- at age 7...
nilsjuenemann 12y ago
It's already known since a while that breastfeeding is a reason for a higher IQ. There was a study in 2007 that the correlation between breastfeeding and the IQ is moderated by genetic variant in FADS2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17984066 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17984066
pgsandstrom 12y ago
The estimates were not adjusted for parental IQ: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXhyklUkAEZ-PD.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXhyklUkAEZ-PD.jpg Also, the correlation was just 0.42: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXofbqUgAE33iR.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXofbqUgAE33iR.png:large
BenDaglish 12y ago
It interests me that the conclusion of these studies is almost always presented as breastfeeding increasing IQ (or conveying health benefits or whatever). Surely, breastfeeding is the norm, and this headline should be "Bottle feeding linked to lower IQ"?
- DanBC 12y ago
  Reframing it like that makes it seem like parents who formula-feed (because you can pump breast milk into a bottle) are harming their children. There's already enough pressure on women to breast feed and I'm not sure it's useful to put more on. It'd be better to make sure women can get rapid access to breast feeding consultants.
  - BenDaglish 12y ago
    >makes it seem like parents who formula-feed are harming their children Well, if the studies are to be believed, then that's exactly what is happening. I completely understand the "pressure on mothers" argument, but I'm not sure that really flies, especially given the (albeit more subtle these days due to legislation) opposite pressure put on mothers by Nestlé and the rest. I also find the fact that initial breastfeeding rates vary so wildly by country (from 98% in Sweden though to 57% in the US) interesting, and again more likely to do with commercial and social pressures of the same kind than to do with physical differences between mothers worldwide. While-ever the argument is presented as "Breast is Best" rather than "Artificial is Worst", I suspect this will continue.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      I suspect that socially progressive Sweden makes it easy to breastfeed while repressive US (Facebook bizarely banned photographs of breastfeeding mothers) doesn't.
- skywhopper 12y ago
  Breastfeeding has not always been the norm. At least in the US in the 70s doctors' advice was strongly against breastfeeding and encouraged switching to formula as soon as possible.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
robmcm 12y ago
How long before breast milk becomes so valuable women start selling it for huge profit? I'm going to set up Boober, an app for breast milk delivery and make millions!
- DanBC 12y ago
  Breast milk and colustrum is already sold, both in healthcare (eg premature babies) and leisure (a short lived experiment saw a London cafe selling breastmilk icecream). http://www.wired.com/2011/05/ff_milk/ http://www.wired.com/2011/05/ff_milk/
- dagw 12y ago
  It's already happening. You're late to this party.
  - robmcm 12y ago
    ... as with every idea I have.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  Happened a long time ago. Probably already some ancient despot came up with the idea of a healthy diet of breast milk for adults. I've mixed feelings about this (Young mothers make money by selling their breast milk to bodybuilders on Craigslist) http://www.theprovince.com/Young+mothers+make+money+selling+their+breast+milk+bodybuilders+Craigslist/10834072/story.html http://www.theprovince.com/Young+mothers+make+money+selling+... Or this (edit: on wet-nursing children), from 2006: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1535897/The-last-taboo-Chinas-super-rich-mothers-splash-out-on-wet-nurses.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1535897/The-last-t... (edit: on wet-nursing adults), from 2013: http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/04/chinas-rich-developing-taste-for-human-breast-milk-3868655/ http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/04/chinas-rich-developing-taste-f...
amelius 12y ago
There is also a negative link between breastfeeding and ADHD, [1]. [1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/breastfeeding-new-ritalin-researchers-investigate-its-effects-adhd-245873 http://www.medicaldaily.com/breastfeeding-new-ritalin-resear...
rayiner 12y ago
The 1-3 point IQ advantage is widely and consistently reported in the literature, and it's probably right as far as it goes. However, studies that additionally adjust for socioenvironmental factors (mothers who breastfeed are more likely to read to kids, have larger vocabularies, etc), show results around 1 IQ point: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633786 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633786. The "mothers should have the option" bit in the article was really off-putting. As if taking the option away was even on the table! It bears keeping in mind that the vast majority of the current adult generation was formula-fed. In 1971, only 25% of kids were breastfed in the hospital, and only 8% were still breastfeeding at 3 months. As a metacomment, recommendations having to do with parenting are myopic. They lack any semblance of cost-benefit analysis, and the attitudes in the medical community about how women should mother date back to a time when womens' opportunity costs for labor-intensive parenting choices were nothing. Also often ignored is how these choices affect fathers. Breastfeeding removes the father's ability to independently take care of an infant. Because feeding is a bonding experience, this creates a dynamic where the child looks at the mother as the last line in being comforted. This is a choice couples can make, but it is one that involves trade offs, which the medical community ignores. It would be one thing if they just left it to patients, neutrally presenting the data and letting parents evaluate the trade-offs. But they tend to hide the data and aggressively push their interpretation of the proper trade-offs.
- _yosefk 12y ago
  "Breastfeeding removes the father's ability to independently take care of an infant." This whole mammal thing is seriously backwards then. We should have evolved from snakes (whose offspring takes care of itself completely independently which supposedly is an excellent kind of dynamic.)
  - user_0001 12y ago
    + 1 I agree whole heartedly [1] [1]source: father of two ;-)
  - trey-jones 12y ago
    Also father of 2. Wife breast-fed both kids to about 14 months. I frequently gave a bottle (of breastmilk) to the first. Second wouldn't take the bottle at all. I never felt left out of the process. I changed (and still change) diapers and contribute in other ways. Mommy mostly handled bedtime until breastfeeding was over - now I frequently handle bedtime. With the second child, during the first year I handled most of the first-kid duties while my wife took care of the baby. I don't see a problem with this at all. My kids (5 and 1) are always excited to see me when I get home, so much so that my wife is more likely to feel left out than I am. Insinuating that breastfeeding causes kids to look to the mother as the last line of comfort is ridiculous in my opinion. Women are literally MADE to do this and I don't care what modern "gender equality" proponents might make of that statement. Edit: I do want to qualify by saying that I do recognize that it's not possibly for every mother to breast feed and I'm not even trying to argue that breastfeeding is superior. I only take issue with the idea that breastfeeding negatively impacts the father's participation.
Symmetry 12y ago
This is something people have been going back and forth about for decades. There's even been a study that used more people and was randomized and controlled. You can read actual literature surveys of all the ways parents can affect their kids' IQs here: http://squid314.livejournal.com/346391.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/346391.html
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
datashovel 12y ago
I should've done this last night, now that I see that this ended up on front page for a while. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(15)70002-1/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-10... http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/stories/audio/langlo/2015/langlo_150317.mp3 http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/stories/audio/...
NateDad 12y ago
Wrong title... Should say "giving formula reduces IQ"

103 points by datashovel 12y ago

While the article does acknowledge that the study only shows correlation and not causation, it doesn't suggest what seems to me the most intuitively obvious alternative hypothesis. We know that increased rates of mental stimuli and social interaction are beneficial to a growing brain. Perhaps breastfeeding correlates with parents that have more free time to interact with their child.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
learc83 12y ago
Researchers have considered your hypothesis. There have been many attempts to eliminate confounding variables in these studies (this doesn't mean that they were necessarily successful in doing so, but they did think about it). Often they attempt to control for differences in parenting styles, which should cover how much time they spend interacting with their child. Also until 6-10 months, babies can't hold their own bottles, so someone is probably still interacting with them (unless you prop up the bottle and leave the baby alone, which is possible but not recommended).
- sjwright 12y ago
  Bottles can be held by disinterested third parties. Boobs rarely can.
vitobcn 12y ago
The actual paper contains much more information than this BBC article. I'm not sure why they didn't link to it, but here is the original paper at the Lancet [1] as well as the full-text pdf file [2]. [1]: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X%2815%2970002-1/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-10... [2]: http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/langlo/PIIS2214-109X(15)70002-1.pdf http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/langlo/PIIS2214-109X(...

cssmoo 12y ago

Maybe but it certainly is linked to epic levels of smugness and superiority complexes on the part of the parents and healthcare system. At least here in the UK. My oldest is quite intelligent. We've had "I bet she was breast fed" more times than I can count. The reply is "no, it's a combination of genetics and nurture"...

learc83 12y ago
Even the most generous estimates are that breastfeeding adds a few IQ points. Definitely not noticeable for an individual. However, at the population level, which is what the healthcare system is dealing with, that's a huge deal. Imagine if the average IQ of the entire population were shifted up by several points.
- trhway 12y ago
  >Imagine if the average IQ of the entire population were shifted up by several points. this is exactly what China has done during recent decades through the one child policy. And i'd say it starts to show.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  Isn’t this the effect of removing lead from the environment? People with high IQ’s don’t see the value of a few more IQ points (marginal utility), but when you have an IQ of around 80 then every point makes a huge difference.
- dagw 12y ago
  Imagine if the average IQ of the entire population were shifted up by several points. I guess it depends on the starting point. I imagine that shifting the average from 85->90 would have a much bigger effect than shifting from 105->110. Most studies seem to show a pretty sharp diminishing returns when correlating IQ points to just about any measure of 'success'.
brogrammer90 12y ago
Now imagine those "genetics and nurture" AND breast feeding..

datashovel 12y ago

I definitely take studies like this with a grain of salt, though I do find them interesting. This one does appear to be from a sufficiently large sample size. Besides this, though, I find it interesting that humans feel they can sufficiently reverse engineer breast milk to replicate the health benefits. Not saying at all that eventually this won't be possible or probable. But the "original formula" has gone through at least tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of years of evolution. From this respect I'm in complete awe that we have this nature-given tool, and astonished that more humans don't do this for their children.

jonah 12y ago
> sufficiently reverse engineer breast milk to replicate the health benefits ...In much the same way a BigMac and Coke replicates food.
aikah 12y ago
> I definitely take studies like this with a grain of salt as everybody should, the problem is the media publishing these stories know that the only thing people read are the headlines. > Experts say the results, while not conclusive ... The article says one thing and its opposite. The goal here isn't to inform but to distract. Absolutely no conclusion can be made out of reading this article.
- colordrops 12y ago
  What exactly is wrong with this study?
  - aikah 12y ago
    Because you read the study ? there isn't even a link to the study in the article. The article is garbage.

jtheory 12y ago

I'm honestly totally in favor of breast-feeding, when it's a reasonable option. I don't want anyone to avoid breast-feeding because they think (as was believed for quite a while, actually) that formula is better. But this line from the OP slightly freaked me out -- just for acknowledging the possibility: > But they say mothers should still have a choice about whether or not to do it. Have they forgotten the abortion debate? There are some relevant points in there, even if formula-feeding actually cost 50 IQ points, reliably. But it's more than just that. Parenting is demanding and unavoidably full of compromises, for just about all parents. Most people just think in overly-simplified terms of what's "right" and "wrong" in parenting decisions, which means that the mother who can't breastfeed because she's got mastitis gets to suffer both from the pain and from guilt of imagining her child's IQ points decreasing; nice. But really -- feeling guilty whenever you see your child is probably quite a bit worse than any harm not breast-feeding them may or may not cause. I feel like there should be just a list of priorities, for parents to review when they're choosing their individual compromises, and at the top of the list would be "dedicate time when you're feeling well to your child". Then you can spend that time actually being supportive, kind, fair, consistent, and all of those things that go out the window when you're feeling awful. And you may be feeling awful if you're compromised away too much of your sleep, if you're in pain, if you've faked being happy for too long, because of some article you read about something that was "right" or "wrong" for your child. All of these other things -- like breast-feeding -- should come below that. Kids don't want/need more time, full-stop; they want/need more time with parents who are actually doing okay.

datashovel 12y ago
Guilt can certainly be an unfortunate consequence. Much like how a blind person must feel every day as they're reminded how difficult life is for those who can't see. Empowering people with information about ways they can improve the chances their offspring will have in life is definitely the most important message I got from the article.
danieltillett 12y ago
If we want to encourage more women to breast-feed then tell them how much weight they will lose. Based on my observations breast-feeding is like having your own personal liposuction machine. More seriously we need to help women breast-feed if they want without making them feel like failures or bad mothers if they don’t. It is a hard problem, but one that is worth trying to come up with a solution.

paulfr 12y ago

Just 2 weeks ago, I won a machine learning contest with a $20,000 prize pool where the goal was to predict the IQ of a child at age 7, based on various biological measurements and demographic indicators. The data includes whether a child was breastfed. After reading the article I did some very quick computations and my finding based on the model I developed is that children who were not breastfed have an IQ impairment in the 1-3 IQ points range, after accounting for confounding factors. This is very consistent with the results published here. Compared to this study, I believe the methodology I'm using is more powerful for three reasons: - much larger sample size: the dataset I have access to comprises 12015 children, compared to 3493 for the study - a larger set of confounding factors is accounted for: notably, the data includes height and weight measurements at up to five points in time - confounding factors are fully accounted for, rather than hand-waved away. This is a complex model based on random forests and linear model, and the results are entirely cross-validated. Stay tuned for more detailed computations. I will also ask the organizers for the exact definition of breastfeeding used. --- Edit: On the other hand, the study is still very appealing because according to the authors, there is little correlation between demographics and breastfeeding in Brazil, whereas the validity of the effect I'm reporting is dependent on whether the demographic model is powerful enough to remove the correlation. Still, I believe most of the correlation is easy to remove, and it isn't clear that there aren't subtle demographic effects even in Brazil. In particular, the proportion of participants with missing IQ data seems to decrease with duration of breastfeeding, and I don't know if they have an explanation for that.

johnloeber 12y ago
Wow, that's very interesting work. I'd love to see a write-up -- not just with respect to breastfeeding, but generally on your findings.
- paulfr 12y ago
  I found a big improvement to my model just after the contest was over, so I made a proposal to develop the improved model and do some more in-depth analysis. I'm currently waiting for their reply! If they accept I'll have an opportunity to look deeper -- it's one thing to develop an efficient model, but fully exploiting it in order to gain a better understanding of the data takes some work. A limitation of these contests is that you're rewarded for producing a very efficient model, but there is very little emphasis on analysis of your model once you built it. I think it's a shame, because the person who built the model is often in the best position to have a good intuition of both the dataset and why the model had to be built that way. I've been considering opening a blog, but I haven't found time to do so yet. Briefly, the purpose of the contest wasn't to understand the effect of breastfeeding, but to understand how important normal child growth is to mental development. They included several scenarios: with all data available, with demographic data removed, and with demographic data and growth curves removed. Unfortunately, IQ is so overwhemingly affected by demographic that the scenarios without demographic data devolved into a game of extracting all the demographic data that was leaked by non-demographic variables. And when demographic data is available, more than 90% of the variance extracted by the model comes from demographic data rather than biological measurements! It's really disheartening to think that depending on the social setting you come from, you start with an IQ of 85 or 115 -- at age 7...

nilsjuenemann 12y ago

It's already known since a while that breastfeeding is a reason for a higher IQ. There was a study in 2007 that the correlation between breastfeeding and the IQ is moderated by genetic variant in FADS2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17984066 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17984066

pgsandstrom 12y ago

The estimates were not adjusted for parental IQ: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXhyklUkAEZ-PD.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXhyklUkAEZ-PD.jpg Also, the correlation was just 0.42: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXofbqUgAE33iR.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAXofbqUgAE33iR.png:large

BenDaglish 12y ago

It interests me that the conclusion of these studies is almost always presented as breastfeeding increasing IQ (or conveying health benefits or whatever). Surely, breastfeeding is the norm, and this headline should be "Bottle feeding linked to lower IQ"?

DanBC 12y ago
Reframing it like that makes it seem like parents who formula-feed (because you can pump breast milk into a bottle) are harming their children. There's already enough pressure on women to breast feed and I'm not sure it's useful to put more on. It'd be better to make sure women can get rapid access to breast feeding consultants.
- BenDaglish 12y ago
  >makes it seem like parents who formula-feed are harming their children Well, if the studies are to be believed, then that's exactly what is happening. I completely understand the "pressure on mothers" argument, but I'm not sure that really flies, especially given the (albeit more subtle these days due to legislation) opposite pressure put on mothers by Nestlé and the rest. I also find the fact that initial breastfeeding rates vary so wildly by country (from 98% in Sweden though to 57% in the US) interesting, and again more likely to do with commercial and social pressures of the same kind than to do with physical differences between mothers worldwide. While-ever the argument is presented as "Breast is Best" rather than "Artificial is Worst", I suspect this will continue.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    I suspect that socially progressive Sweden makes it easy to breastfeed while repressive US (Facebook bizarely banned photographs of breastfeeding mothers) doesn't.
skywhopper 12y ago
Breastfeeding has not always been the norm. At least in the US in the 70s doctors' advice was strongly against breastfeeding and encouraged switching to formula as soon as possible.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

robmcm 12y ago

How long before breast milk becomes so valuable women start selling it for huge profit? I'm going to set up Boober, an app for breast milk delivery and make millions!

DanBC 12y ago
Breast milk and colustrum is already sold, both in healthcare (eg premature babies) and leisure (a short lived experiment saw a London cafe selling breastmilk icecream). http://www.wired.com/2011/05/ff_milk/ http://www.wired.com/2011/05/ff_milk/
dagw 12y ago
It's already happening. You're late to this party.
- robmcm 12y ago
  ... as with every idea I have.
ptaipale 12y ago
Happened a long time ago. Probably already some ancient despot came up with the idea of a healthy diet of breast milk for adults. I've mixed feelings about this (Young mothers make money by selling their breast milk to bodybuilders on Craigslist) http://www.theprovince.com/Young+mothers+make+money+selling+their+breast+milk+bodybuilders+Craigslist/10834072/story.html http://www.theprovince.com/Young+mothers+make+money+selling+... Or this (edit: on wet-nursing children), from 2006: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1535897/The-last-taboo-Chinas-super-rich-mothers-splash-out-on-wet-nurses.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1535897/The-last-t... (edit: on wet-nursing adults), from 2013: http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/04/chinas-rich-developing-taste-for-human-breast-milk-3868655/ http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/04/chinas-rich-developing-taste-f...

amelius 12y ago

There is also a negative link between breastfeeding and ADHD, [1]. [1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/breastfeeding-new-ritalin-researchers-investigate-its-effects-adhd-245873 http://www.medicaldaily.com/breastfeeding-new-ritalin-resear...

rayiner 12y ago

The 1-3 point IQ advantage is widely and consistently reported in the literature, and it's probably right as far as it goes. However, studies that additionally adjust for socioenvironmental factors (mothers who breastfeed are more likely to read to kids, have larger vocabularies, etc), show results around 1 IQ point: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633786 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633786. The "mothers should have the option" bit in the article was really off-putting. As if taking the option away was even on the table! It bears keeping in mind that the vast majority of the current adult generation was formula-fed. In 1971, only 25% of kids were breastfed in the hospital, and only 8% were still breastfeeding at 3 months. As a metacomment, recommendations having to do with parenting are myopic. They lack any semblance of cost-benefit analysis, and the attitudes in the medical community about how women should mother date back to a time when womens' opportunity costs for labor-intensive parenting choices were nothing. Also often ignored is how these choices affect fathers. Breastfeeding removes the father's ability to independently take care of an infant. Because feeding is a bonding experience, this creates a dynamic where the child looks at the mother as the last line in being comforted. This is a choice couples can make, but it is one that involves trade offs, which the medical community ignores. It would be one thing if they just left it to patients, neutrally presenting the data and letting parents evaluate the trade-offs. But they tend to hide the data and aggressively push their interpretation of the proper trade-offs.

_yosefk 12y ago
"Breastfeeding removes the father's ability to independently take care of an infant." This whole mammal thing is seriously backwards then. We should have evolved from snakes (whose offspring takes care of itself completely independently which supposedly is an excellent kind of dynamic.)
- user_0001 12y ago
  + 1 I agree whole heartedly [1] [1]source: father of two ;-)
- trey-jones 12y ago
  Also father of 2. Wife breast-fed both kids to about 14 months. I frequently gave a bottle (of breastmilk) to the first. Second wouldn't take the bottle at all. I never felt left out of the process. I changed (and still change) diapers and contribute in other ways. Mommy mostly handled bedtime until breastfeeding was over - now I frequently handle bedtime. With the second child, during the first year I handled most of the first-kid duties while my wife took care of the baby. I don't see a problem with this at all. My kids (5 and 1) are always excited to see me when I get home, so much so that my wife is more likely to feel left out than I am. Insinuating that breastfeeding causes kids to look to the mother as the last line of comfort is ridiculous in my opinion. Women are literally MADE to do this and I don't care what modern "gender equality" proponents might make of that statement. Edit: I do want to qualify by saying that I do recognize that it's not possibly for every mother to breast feed and I'm not even trying to argue that breastfeeding is superior. I only take issue with the idea that breastfeeding negatively impacts the father's participation.

Symmetry 12y ago

This is something people have been going back and forth about for decades. There's even been a study that used more people and was randomized and controlled. You can read actual literature surveys of all the ways parents can affect their kids' IQs here: http://squid314.livejournal.com/346391.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/346391.html

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

datashovel 12y ago

I should've done this last night, now that I see that this ended up on front page for a while. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(15)70002-1/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-10... http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/stories/audio/langlo/2015/langlo_150317.mp3 http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/stories/audio/...

NateDad 12y ago

Wrong title... Should say "giving formula reduces IQ"