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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

Original poster

Breastfed babies are better behaved says study

302 replies

crikeybadger · 10/05/2011 07:37

Link here if you are interested.

OP posts:
BrokenBananaTantrum · 10/05/2011 08:55

Thanks everyone. Most of the time I ignore this stuff but occasionally it gets to me. It just so happens that DD is clingly and has only just started sleeping in her own room in the last 2 weeks (she will be 5yo in July) so this study was close to home. She is not badly behaved but is strong willed. They mentioned on Radio 4 that they thought that it might be partly due to the close contact between mum and baby during breats feeding, but held DD very close when giving her her bottle and it was nearly always me that fed her.

tiktok · 10/05/2011 08:56

It is not a strange and woolly study, really it isn't!

They are not making a 'generalisation on a child'. It's the massive, internationally-respected Millennium cohort study which is revealing loads of useful data on thousands and thousands of babies born in 2000. The media might call it 'bad' behaviour but the study does not. They have controlled for circumstances inc all those background features you mention, NoWayNoHow and they still find the difference.

What the media do with this sort of thing is to distort - but the science is sound.

ComeWhineWithMe · 10/05/2011 08:57

My dd was very easy to bf she came out of the womb looking for a boob, found it and hasn't been off since, yet she is my most difficult baby just very hard work.

As somebody else said it just seems very flawed and I think it is just going to make a lot of people feel a bit shit.

tiktok · 10/05/2011 08:58

What is 'flawed' about the study???

ChocChipWine · 10/05/2011 09:01

What a load of rubbish this study is - my ff son is the best behaved out of his contemporaries at least half of whom were breast fed. In a group of 10. He has also been ill less than some of the bf babies - who have suffered from asthma, bronchitis and several other ailments that have meant hospitalisation. The kids (mums) have been friends since they were born and are now 4.

I have had 2 big babies neither of whom I managed to bf although trying and I just try not to read this type of article as it makes me angry - the most important thing is to feed the baby after all. But for a first time mum struggling with her choice to ff these articles are so upsetting.

Bonsoir · 10/05/2011 09:01

It would be very wrong to prevent such studies being carried out (or their results being published) in order to preserve the feelings (of guilt and/or failure) of those mothers who, for whatever reason, did not breastfeed their babies at all or for long.

None of us have lived our lives perfectly and we all need to be aware of our own shortcomings as well as of those areas where we have done better.

Cosmosis · 10/05/2011 09:03

I really don?t think research like this serves any purpose other than to make ffers who already feel guilty* about it feel more guilty. Is it really more likely to make you bf? I don?t think so.

*disclaimer, I am not saying all ffers feel guilty, or that they should feel guilty, just that some do.

ComeWhineWithMe · 10/05/2011 09:05

It seems to be making a huge generalisation about BF babies when obviously everyone's experience is different, it just seems a bit silly to say bf babies are better behaved.
They should have used the money to buy big sticks and beat all the FF mum's rather than conduct this survey.

tiktok · 10/05/2011 09:06

Why is the study 'rubbish'??? It cannot make a prediction for individual children - the majority of whom do not have the behaviour issues described in the paper. There are many reasons why children are different from each other and some will have behaviour differences as well, unrelated to feeding. No one sensible thinks the study is saying 'your baby will be this way' and 'your baby will be that way'....and having a kid without issues of this type does not 'disprove' the study.

cocoachannel · 10/05/2011 09:06

"None of us have lived our lives perfectly and we all need to be aware of our own shortcomings as well as of those areas where we have done better."

I agree, but what does that have to do with how we were fed as babies?

bumble34 · 10/05/2011 09:07

I think the study sounds really interesting (i like your previous point tiktok) The media have to take responsibility for how they report these types of studies. Nowhere does it say ALL breastfed babies are angels and FF are terrors. Neither does it say that ff feeding mothers are bad or neglectful. The aim isn't to make anyone feel quilty but if it shows that there are benefits to breastfeeding and that leads to more funding for breastfeeding support helping more mums who want to bf to manage then surely it's a good thing
My 2yr old ds was bf -some days he's a dream child others a little devil just like most other 2 yr olds

Bonsoir · 10/05/2011 09:07

Science is all about establishing general truths (generalisations)...

tiktok · 10/05/2011 09:11

ComeWhine - it does not make any generalisations. It reports the observations of the survey and number crunches them to look at overall statistically significant outcomes. This does not 'generalise' in the sense of saying 'all bf babies are like this' and 'all ff babies are like that'. The behaviour is not defined as 'bad', though for all I know some newspapers may report it that way.

The purpose of these studies is not to make anyone feel guilty. Individual mothers can ignore, if they want to, safe in the knowledge that the majority of kids in the survey did not have the behaviour issues described anyway.

The useful purpose is to inform state expenditure priorities, training of HCPs, social care programmes, employment law and so on. Is it worth trying to support mothers to breastfeed and to breastfeed for longer? Does it make a difference and should we spend money on removing barriers to breastfeeding? Yes - there is sufficient evidence that this would be money well-spent.

bonkers20 · 10/05/2011 09:12

lilham said "shouldn't do is seeing the journal article and conclude bf directly improves children behavior"

Actually, I think it should be "shouldn't do is seeing the journal article and conclude ff negatively affects children's behaviour". We need to regard BF as the norm and the health and behaviour of a BF child as the normal way to be.

bumble34 · 10/05/2011 09:13

Should all research be banned to stop people feeling guilty for the life choices they have made. ie causes of cancer shouldn't be looked into so that we don't blame ourselves for our diet choices causing bowel cancer?
Why can't anything positive be said about breastfeeding without it being turned into how guity it makes ff feeders feel?

ChocChipWine · 10/05/2011 09:14

I think that the way these things are reported is misleading. 6% of bf babies had an abnormal score at age 5 and 16% of bf babies did. To me reporting that ff babies have a 30 % higher chance of bad behaviour is not quite the same - although I appreciate it is just number crunching.

DialsMavis · 10/05/2011 09:15

With BF studies how long does a child have to BF'd for to count as BF and is it always EBF? I assume both my children would not count as DS was only BF until 6 weeks and DD who is still BF at 6 months has the odd bottle here and there? Does each study have the same criteria?

ChocChipWine · 10/05/2011 09:15

whoops should be 16 % of ff babies

DialsMavis · 10/05/2011 09:16

that should have read as 16 weeks for my DS

ChocChipWine · 10/05/2011 09:16

This study says breastfeeding for 4 months

OneLittleHopper · 10/05/2011 09:17

I guess it's fairly standard for studies like this, but what struck me was that the study was based on parents filling in questionnaires, not on actual first-hand scientific observation of the children in various situations. Surely vague concepts such as 'restlessness' are fairly hard to quantify with any great accuracy, especially when it's the parents assessing them? What one parent might class as a 'restless' child might be another parent's dream child!

Would also be nice to know what the effect was on babies that were mixed fed...

tiktok · 10/05/2011 09:17

Mavis - different studies have different definitions of 'breastfed'. You always have to read the paper to see how they defined it.

Some studies have breastfeeding defined as 'having had any breastmilk' for instance.

Bonsoir · 10/05/2011 09:18

My DD was breastfed for several years so can I now safely assume that she has a seat reserved in heaven? Wink

bullet234 · 10/05/2011 09:18

Welllll, I was breastfed until I was a year (no expressed milk either as I refused a bottle) and I appear to have been very clingy with my mum - until the age of 5 I hardly spoke to anyone apart from her. And then when I was older I would frequently talk to other people through her and now do the same often with my DH. So I suppose those could be signs of anxiety, perhaps.
But, Ds2 was breastfed for four days only and is very clingy with me, whereas Ds1 who was breastfed for 7 weeks is the complete opposite, never had any stranger anxiety and can not distinguish between strangers and familiar people.

ElsieR · 10/05/2011 09:18

I take your point Bumble, you are right.
On the other hand nothing positive is ever said about ff/bottle feeding (not that I have read anyway), I guess that's why some of us are a bit sensitive about it.