Breastfed babies are better behaved says study

[crikeybadger]

Link here if you are interested.

Sorry far happier ff

"Obviously if bf was going to have such a big impact on behaviour such behaviour would be irreversible?"

I'm not sure that follows - the study doesn't mention correction of the behaviour, merely its perception at 5 years of age. It may be that a follow on study showed that abnormal behaviour patterns are seen more in children who were ffed as infants between the ages of 5 and 15, then the differences are negligable, for example. Also, it doesn't say 'This behaviour is BECAUSE the child was ffed', it says 'there are higher incidences in children who were ffed'. So no implication of bfeeding or ffeeding being a cause of the behaviour, iyswim? Does that make sense? sorry if I'm waffling, haven't had any caffiene yet today, and my brain won't kick in until I've had some!!

But the study says nothing about whether the behaviour is irreversible or not. These kids were 5 - the study might well get different results in the next follow up at 7 or whatever. Indeed, children, and parenting methods, change over time.

Why does this mean you should question the validity of the study?

And a study cannot be invalidated because it does not reflect what you see 'where you live' - you observe among what has to be a limited no. of people, with a limited contact with them, MilaMae, that it's the stressed out mothers who change to formula. This may well be true.

But it does not mean anything. The question raised by you, perfectly sensibly, was 'does personality of the mother affect whether or not she breastfeeds?' and 2 people came back and said 'yes, it may do, but it could go either way - stressed = more bf, or stressed = more ff'.

It doesn't help the debate if you say 'well where I live it's the stressed mothers who ff'....because your perceptions might be limited (necessarily, to the people you observe), and they might be wrong (we have already discussed how perception may not be reliable). And of course the mothers' stress may have zero to do with anything anyway!

On reflection(and caffeine) I'm wondering if it's patience that is more relevant here than stress???? Ie the ability to learn a new skill. Patient kids are more likely to wait for attention,not resort to grabbing(stealing)but wait etc.

Incidentally I know very few kids that engage in proper stealing at 5 at all so interesting that this has been included. Even proper lying is quite rare at 5.

I wonder if there is something to the idea that babies who find learning to BF difficult are more likely to end up being FF because BF is so hard that most women get desperate/mastitis and give up. After my experience with DS I totally understand why some women give up, because he was a hopelessly overexcited and incompetent feeder, even when we got the latch right, and for me it was sheer agony for six weeks. It was only because I'm bloodyminded and absolutely determined to BF because of all the benefits that I pushed through the pain.

And if anyone comes on here blathering on about how "it's not supposed to hurt if you're doing it right" I'll sock you one. For many women it's agony.

DS is 10mths and I'm still BF, with the odd FF when mummy's away. I'm so glad I persevered. He's still overexcited about everything! It's just his little personality. I do hope he won't be one of the 4% of BF babies shoplifting at 5

This is another way to make mums who don't or can't breastfeed to feel guilty, I didn't breastfeed but my children aren't different to other children. It isn't how they are fed but how they are brought up that affects their behaviour.

In fact lying and stealing at 5 in my experience is nearly always attributed to other things going on in a child's life eg new baby,family split etc.

I just don't get the point of these wooly "studies" which 9 times out of 10 lifestyle,genes,parenting pretty much totally trump. They serve nobody other than newspapers that grab the headlines.

Research/money put into support and research into latch,hold etc far more useful.

The other things going on in a child's life will be fairly equally distributed through the sample of 10,000 children in the study. They were in any case controlled for in the confounders:

"Briefly, a priori confounders were household socio- economic position (SEP),27 mother?s mental health (Malaise Inventory and Kessler scales)28?30 and mother?s age, education, smoking during pregnancy and relationship status and baby?s admission to a neonatal unit. Additional potential confounders were mother?baby attachment (Condon scale),31 baby?s birth order, mother?s alcohol use during pregnancy,26 type of childcare the child attended and age when the child started childcare."

The study may not be to everyone's personal liking; it may even conflict with what people observe in their own family or neighbourhood. But it isn't 'woolly'! It's a well-organised, well-controlled, cohort study of 10,000 babies which should help guide policy and public spending, and in no way means we can't also research 'latch, hold, etc'.

"Oh dear me, now we will have more mothers struggling to breastfeed because it makes your baby contented, with no behaviour problems as well as being more intelligent and no allergies."

Why would anyone who stopped to think for more than one second conclude that breastfeeding 'makes' your baby these things? Or that there is any guarentee of anything with bf?

Most kids do not have the behaviour problems looked for in this study. This applies to bf and ff babies. A few did, in both groups. There were more in the ff group. That's the top and bottom of it.

Just a further thought on cause and effect potentially being reversed (ie calm, qiet babies being breast fed). There is also the possibility the coincidence (ie two things occuring at the same time) of calm, quietness and breastfeeding having been caused by a third (and fourth and fifth) hitherto unstudied occurance(s). Possible examples:

• maternal stress before and during pregnancy
• maternal nutrition before and during pregnancy
• birthing experence

All of the above could quite possibly influence both the baby directly and also the mother's ability to breast feed.

IMO we shouldnt be frightened, threatened or angered by such studies. They add to our knowledge. Hopefully through that knowledge we will see clearer how to help families to help themselves to raise healthy and happy families.

So all the mothers filling out the questionnaire would have the where with all to deduce that a brief spell of stealing could be attributed to a new baby etc? I think not,I've had to state the bleeding obvious with several issues of child behaviour quite often to parents you'd have thought should know better.

Also some of those factors would have very little to do with why on the rare occasions it happens a child would steal or lie-smoking,alcohol use,birth order?A child can steal for soooo many reasons(many of which aren't included in that list),it's not a tick box thing.

Sorry I do find that wooly.

I'm really pleased about this study, my hospital didn't encourage breastfeeding at all - in fact I was advised to give formula top-ups (which they gave to us all for free) during her first few days of life. Had I not already read up on breastfeeding and seen this was unnecessary and been fortunate enough not to run into any problems breastfeeding, I may well have not persevered. So anything that makes policy makers and professionals (as well as parents) think differently, normalise breastfeeding and provide support, is good news as far as I am concerned.

Stunning.

The fourth person on this thread actually says "breastfed babies are held more by their mothers".

Might I ask, politely, how the fucking fuckety fuck it is exactly you think FF mothers feed their child? Do you think we load up a water pistol and fire it across the room?

MilaMae, if you can, read the paper. It would answer your questions. The tool used does not depend on parents' understanding of the impact of a new baby. You seem fixated on the stealing and lying thing - there are loads of aspects of behaviour covered by the SDQ tool.

Whatever....mothers' alcohol use was probably used because it can indicate a less happy home which would impact on behaviour, or indeed heavy alcohol use could impact on the child's development in utero as we know. You'd want to know these things if you were looking for reasons why some kids have behaviour problems, but of course there are many other reasons why they might. The fact that all the parents were asked all the questions would tend to put them all on a level playing field, though, but any epidemiology/observation study is going to have some drawbacks of this type 'cos you cannot control for everything. A lot of the smoking and ill health research, and drinking and ill health research, has the same set of drawbacks.

Gnome, I agree - all those aspects could play a part.

Alpine, breastfed babies in general feed more often than formula fed babies. So hour for hour, the mothers hold the babies more.

Hmmm. My DD is now 15 mo and still bf.

She's very cute, but she's a right mischevious little madam. Gotta say all the ff babies sit nicely and play quietly with toys while DD tears around the room/grizzles/generally misbehaves

Happily, being mischieveous and tearing round the room at 15 months are not considered to be behavioural problems in a 15 month old :)

Alpine Pony - the poster actually said "They do acknowledge they don't know what accounts for the effects and it could simply be that breastfed babies spend more time being held close to their mothers. Which is quite useful info because it means parents who hold their babies close and interact with them whilst bottle feeding (and most of the bottle feeders I know did this) can achieve the same effects."

as she says, most FF mothers hold their babies to feed them.

FWIW, I have seen LOADS of babies sitting in their prams with a bottle wedged in their mouth - so it isn't totally unheard of for a FFed baby to NOT be held during a feed, although I imagine this is only used when in a tearing hurry to do something, rather than a standard way of feeding the baby! I would say that the majority of these babies are in the 4-8 months age group, but have seen a couple of very very tiny ones being fed this way in town.

I have yet to see a baby in a pram being breastfed whilst the mother walks around town though (although doubt this is from lack of trying!!).

I'm still amazed that people think FF babies aren't held as much. Never mind, if people believe this bollocks and it empowers them, let them eat cake.

Personally I leave my FF baby in a cupboard and bring him out just at feeding times.

????

But ff do feed less often than bf babies - why be so cross? It's just a fact!

It is admittedly an extrapolation to say that they are therefore 'held by their mothers for longer' but it's not an unreasonable one.

"The fourth person on this thread actually says "breastfed babies are held more by their mothers".

The 5 year infant feeding survey done by the DOH (big survey involving about 9000 mums I think) asks ff mums why they chose not to breastfeed.

The main answer given was 'so someone else can feed the baby'. Siblings, partners, family and friends I presume. But bottle-propping does come into it, especially with older babies. It's common practice where I live.

"Research/money put into support and research into latch,hold etc far more useful."

The point of these studies isn't to promote breastfeeding actually MilaMae. It's to better how infant feeding can impact on later health in childhood.

I'm all for more money being put into breastfeeding promotion, and it's nice that you are too.

Errrr mums do hold their babies at times other than when feeding.