To think breast fed babies are more intellegent

[thecatamongthepidgeons]

Because their parents tend to be more intellegent not because they were breast fed?
More intellegent parents are more likely to choose to breast feed regardless of any dificulties they face if they think it will benefit their children.

Thanks, boos - much appreciated.

I have ff all 3 of my dcs, and understand the research, re intelligence. If anything it is the one area that doesn't prod me into guilty feelings about my failure to b'feed!

I agree with Habbibu, stating the results of the research is fine, but to imply that I am in someway stupid because I was unable to overcome the huge issues that I had with breastfeeding is just dumb and infuriating.

Hmm, yeah I guess it could be interpreted like that, I just thought she was trying to cover all bases.

Has op been back anyway?

Or spelling of 'intellegent' Hully.

there is some truth to that. It is usually middle class women that bf, they are more likely to be better educated and wealthier and so are their babies. It not really to do with the bm but the back ground and circumstances of the mother involved. op didnt work it very well

TBH MaryThorbar I'm not disagreeing with the OP, but with various posters through the 5 pages on here...

And nicely put Hully

She's been back to say this: Either people agree with the researchers in which case FFing should be avoided whenever possible or they are possibly wrong and it doesn't matter.
Either way why are people being so upset by my opinion?
When some one questions my parenting I either shrug it off if confident in my choice or consider changing.

Which rather lends weight to the bollocks OP theory. And I love the idea that FF should be avoided for the sake of a putative 3-5 IQ points...

KnittedBreast - THE RESEARCH CORRECTS FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS AND MATERNAL EDUCATION. That's a basic of social science research.

Habbibu -3-5 points Who TF cares for that!

And also the bf/socio-economic status thing is not universal but cultural.

There have been studies that show that bf babies tend to have higher IQs. That is a fact unfortunately. So you can put this down to one of 2 things...

Either:

- The demographic of its parents. I don't just include iq in that.
- The act of breastfeeding itself.

What about the time spent with the child in terms of interaction, play and learning.

It seems to me that the studies have accounted for social class, education, parental IQ etc. However have any studies accounted for quality time spent with a child in the rest of its early development?

There could be an argument to say that a mother who commits to BFing may be more likely to spend more time with the child on these things, however, it is equally possible that a FF mother would also be equally as commited to these other areas.

Do any of the studies look at this kind of interaction as well as weighting for socio-economic status, education and IQ?

(Before I get jumped on I'm not saying FF mothers do not do these things - I'm just interested in whether it has been looked at - I FF'd DD1, but also spend a lot of time playing and learning with her)

Habbibu - how can the research correct it? Are we now raising babies in laboratories under controlled conditions to achieve these results?

fwiw, I think the overall benefits of bf, comprised of numerous small but statistically significant benefits to both mother and child absolutely make it worth promoting and supporting - I'm a big fan and have been lucky to be able to do it. But bf support and normalisation is far from what it should be in this country, so many people do struggle and find themselves unable to continue, which can make many people feel sad and guilty, and that's a real shame and unnecessary.

Habbibu - I agree with you that the OP is making a wrongful assumption that intelligent mothers will breastfeed against the odds - determined and/or altruistic yes, intelligent - not necessarily.

However I find it hard to see how these studies can be very well controlled.

Alpine, it's easy - you pick mothers of similar socio economic status and education etc etc, by means of initial questionnaire, and then pick half that bf and half that ff - and compare results. That's an oversimplification, but pretty much the basic principle.

lenak, don't know. But I think it's likely that proper researchers who get paid to think about this stuff all day will try to correct out as many confounders as possible.

Sorry, meant to say corrected - not controlled.

Well, they're controlled as well as any social science research is - sample size, matching partcipants as far as possible, etc. I'm not a ss researcher, but did work with a number of them in planning their research etc - some studies are better than others, and I've no idea which ones the OP is talking about, but to assume that this kind of control hasn't even been considered is just daft.

middle class wealtheir and more often than not older mothers are more likely to spend more time with their babies, they are more likely to be much wanted and planned children. As a result the mother often spends more time with their child interacting and this also leads to more intelligent children. its all about money and social class. A bf baby is more likely to spend more time with its mother because mum cant hand it over to other family members to be fed, so child develops a stronger link with mum. constant one on one attention leads to better strong relationships with the main carer which leads to brighter babies. I didnt think people even debated this anymore-its obvious.

Bloody hell, knitted. I don't know where to start.

i know its a horrible sounding very brash generalisation but in the most its true. the key to remember is that its "more likely to...." rather than difinitive.

children from middle class back grounds that are ff still do better than children from poorer back grounds. just the way of the world sadly :(

Knitted, my jaw has just hit the floor at the huge generalisations in your post.

Mine too

I must be a a right social standing fuck up then!!!!

what do you find so shocking? that wealthier children do better? really? its not right but it happens.

my post was based on huge generalisations but thats the gist of it sadly. I dont agree with or think its right but thats what research suggests

ooh do you know what? I get to add my first ever to this thread! You're obviously not intelligent yourself to come out with such drivel.

@ Habbibu But I think it's likely that proper researchers who get paid to think about this stuff all day will try to correct out as many confounders as possible.

You have a lot of faith in researchers - most have an agenda and these types of studies are often quite narrow as they set out to prove or disprove a given hypothesis (I'm saying this as someone who is an analyst in their day job and nearing the completion of an MA in Social Science by the way - so I have grounds for thinking this)

Anything they correct should be stated clearly though, and I've never seen the particular example I give stated (if someone knows of a study that does I would be interested to see it from a research perspective).

To be accurate though, it would need to be a longitudinal study rather than a snap-shot study as you couldn't totally rely on parents recollections / willingness to tell the truth.

I guess this is one of the reasons it hasn't been looked at in detail because it would need to be quite tightly controlled to limit the subjectiveness as much as possible and that type of control in child rearing could lead to its own unique set of problems.

What they really need is a bigger version of the Child of Our Time study that Prof Robert Winston is involved in to look at this issue (as well as others).