To question BF benefits

[Lydia55y]

Firstly this isn’t a goody thread. I breastfed until 8 weeks, then mix fed my baby before ending up exclusively FF. I’m happy with my decisions and I’m not looking for opinions/validation for that. Equally I don’t judge others in the slightest for the way they feed their babies.

However...where I live at least (on the outskirts of a market town with some fairly deprived areas side by side with more affluent areas), BF predominantly seems to be the choice for middle class mums.

It has me thinking that surely some of the health benefits of BF in the UK can be linked to the socio/economic factors of the mums more likely to have the support, understanding and/or inclination to enable them to BF? I did not find it easy and I certainly would not have continued as long as I did if I didn’t have such a supportive partner and friends and family network. I also felt a bit of unspoken peer pressure from the circles I mix in - probably purely in my mind but it’s very much the done thing by all my mum friends.

Like I said not goady. I’m sure someone with medical knowledge might shoot me down but lots of people beat themselves up about not being able to BF as the benefits are championed by health professionals but do studies fully consider environmental factors and compare apples with apples as such?

I’m not suggesting FF is identical to BF, clearly something natural can not be imitated exactly by a man made product but surely so many other things impact a child’s health? E.g. obesity is also linked to lower income and availability of cheap junk food, those babies may also be FF but how can we ever know what has had the greatest impact?

Just food for thought!

Those things are corrected for in the studies - if they didn’t it would look like the outcomes for bf were vastly better.

I ff from 6 weeks.

Yabu to assume that medical studies don’t correct for this without looking into it. Studies into benefits of breast feeding are often international and account for a range of different factors.

The bottom line is it much better for babies and Mummies physical health if they breast feed.

Breast fed my first for 2.5 years and currently breast feeding my 2 year old.

Do I believe all the health benefits? I'm not sure, I'm not knowledgable enough on the subject to make sweeping statements, but I absolutely do believe that it can offer great immunity due to the baby receiving the mothers antibodies etc.

Even though I don't 100% buy into all the health benefits I still breast feed because a) I love the bond and closeness it provides, b) I love the comfort it gives and c) nothing will convince me that giving milk meant for baby cows to human babies is on par with human milk for human babies etc.

I don't believe this thread isn't meant to be goady. All threads that criticise BF or FF in some way are goady.

As is said a million times over, women are educated enough and rational enough to make the right decision for them and their baby so we should all just be left to it.

Yes there are studies that suggest this. As you already seem to know.
I am sorry you feel that you need to justify your decisions by doing this thread, but I feel you are being disingenuous.

These sorts of factors are corrected for using statistical techniques when large data sets are being analysed (clinical scientist here). It’s very easy to do. We essentially break the data into sets. Say, people of high socioeconomic status and people of lower socioeconomic status (it’s more complicated than that but for illustrative purposes). Then within those groups, we compare bf vs no bf. If the effect of bf holds across groups, then it’s presumed the effect can’t be influenced by socioeconomic status. Nearly all bf studies show the effect holds regardless (there have been a couple where that has not been the case).

The challenge though is that you have to anticipate what factors might impact the causal reason you can collect data on them. It could be that it’s not socioeconomic status but household nutritional status that actually causes the effect seen with bf (I’m just making this up). If in your research you don’t ask about nutritional status, then when you come to analysing your data, you can’t control for that factor because you don’t have sufficient data on it.

So it’s quite easy to do, but also can be challenging as you have to build these assumptions in from the start (which is not always possible).

That said infant and child health is very complex and it never comes down to just one factor. And what may be true at the population level may not be the case for any one individual child. Children don’t sit around reading research reports.

Studies do not generally adjust for socio-economic factors. How can they? They can't say hmm that ff kid is from a poor background so let's make his data less significant than a ff middle class kid can they?!?!

There are benefits to bf but you are right: more middle class mums bf as they have more support to enable them to do so. Can afford lactation consultants etc. Plus more social stigma amongst white working class about bfing. Also middle class kids are less likely to be obese, more likely to do well at school etc. Not fair I know but that's the way it is currently. It's correlation not causation.

Also a lot of these studies are worldwide based. Using formula in a developing country without guaranteed access to clean water and sterile equipment - not as good as breastfeeding.

Good article here:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/20/is-breast-really-best-i-looked-at-all-the-data-to-find-out

Also to add - I breastfeed my ds with a bottle of formula added each day. Planned to stop at 3 months still going strong at 7. I think bf-ing is great but benefits massively overstated.

I’m not criticising FF or BF. I don’t believe however that all women are educated and rational enough to make an informed decision. Unfortunately some parts of our country are in deep poverty and the behaviours that are ingrained within SOME parts of those communities don’t seem to me based on my limited view to go hand in hand with BF. Hence why SureStart etc is so invaluable.

But if these factors are considered as PP has said then that’s the end of my morning musings.

Studies do not generally adjust for socio-economic factors. How can they? They can't say hmm that ff kid is from a poor background so let's make his data less significant than a ff middle class kid can they?!?!

Of course they can.

*I don't believe this thread isn't meant to be goady. All threads that criticise BF or FF in some way are goady.

As is said a million times over, women are educated enough and rational enough to make the right decision for them and their baby so we should all just be left to it.*

So we're educated and rational enough to choose but not to discuss it between ourselves? That's a bit unfair. In any event I didn't read the OP as critical of either BF or FF. We should be able to discuss the subject (and criticise other viewpoints) if we want without being perennially shot down for it.

I don’t believe however that all women are educated and rational enough to make an informed decision.

Regardless of socio-economic status, all women know that breast milk is better for babies than formula and they will also be told this during their pregnant.

So yes, women may not be well read on the subject (including myself) but they will still know BF is preferable.

What they choose to do with that information is their own business.

For many, many reasons a lot of women don't want to breast feed, or they want to but for reasons outside of their control it doesn't work but they are all rational enough to make what they believe to be the best decision for them and for their baby.

Only the mother and child know the ins-and-puts of their individual feeding choices and the reasons why they are feeding in the manner they are (BF, FF or combi) and I don't think it's very fair to imply that women whose babies are FF are not making informed choices.

The biggest advantage is cost, bm is free, if you are getting milk tokens (do they still do them?) you may not care about the cost. Also there's really good health benefits. Personal preference but yabu to suggest it's simply a case of rich kids would do fine anyway, those mums have bothered reading the research

Because a medical study of the make up of breast milk shows antibodies and immunity that cannot be replicated by formula. Because we know that very premature babies will not survive on formula and have to be given a substitute mothers milk (if yours has not come in yet). Because there are endless studies some in the poorest countries in the world which still show the massive benefits of breast milk. People make decisions about how to feed for a wide range of reasons but there's no question over the fact that the make up of breast milk is superior to formula. That doesn't mean that it's wrong to formula feed.

There's all sorts of statistical techniques to allow for social class differences.

Plus, not all countries have the same
MC - tend to bf
WC - tend to ff culture as the UK. Or even if they do, class differences in health aren't as pronounced as in the UK. They also have different 'food cultures' in that the MC and WC tend to have more similar diets than in the UK. And as a PP said they will break the data up into lots of tiny datasets in order to compare like for like.

A bigger problem is potentially if the data they have varies in quality across different countries.