Breast fed children cope better with stress....

[zippitippitoes]

is the Dialy mail trying to redeem itself reporting this research here

but in the article is it breast milk that itself has the effect or "However, they said they cannot be sure that the effect is due to breastfeeding itself. It may be that women who breastfeed are more likely to have the sort of nurturing personality that leads to their children becoming less stressed than others."

Apparently it held true as a stress buster regardless of otherr socio economic factors which is interesting. It is a swedish study.

I think it would be interesting if breast milk did have an effect on the "hard wiring" of the brain with regard to development and ability to cope with stress rather than the nurturing factor which i think is cobblers.

There is a slight possibility that some element of breast milk does have an impact on the developement of the part of the brain that deals with stress. I think it is more likely to be the nurture aspect though.

Its interesting research.

I think that people that bottle fed their babies might disagree with one or two aspects of that though.

The ability to breastfeed isnt a direct relation to a nurturing personality. Breastfeeding is very much a skill to be learned/perfected.

I also wonder whether there may be factors to the reasons that a baby was bottle fed in the first place that could influence stress levels?

Would love to know the criteria for their studies.

Could it be possible (without getting in the firing line) that the inate personality of the baby might determine not only breastfeeding but also stress management. What I am trying to get at is that perhaps a baby who is easily stressed may be one of the babies who finds breastfeeding difficult and therefore is formula fed, the tendency for stress being inborn and leading to the formula rather than the other way around?
My ds was breastfed until 16mths, I in all honesty would have put him onto formula if he would have taken it for several reasons not the least of which was that he and I found breastfeeding challenging, painful and exhausting. He incidently does not deal well with stress, it is in part to do with his early life experience and in part to do with his innate personality. I am not sure if this makes sense or not but makes for interesting ponderings...

there is a bit more detail of the research in the dt

the actual figures are quite surprising as presented.

The anxiety situation is divorce.

"Compared with children in intact families, breast-fed children, between the ages of five and 10, were twice as likely to be highly anxious while bottle-fed children in the same age group were nine times as likely. The study was conducted among 9,000 children"

It is the close contact which is the predominating factor.

Is a tendancy to stress hereditary, and (please don't yell at me) will a less stressed mother find it easier to breast feed?
You might then find that if parents are less stressed, so is the home environment, and so the child is less stressed.
Though ds is definately a more stressed child than dd. Both breast fed, I am pretty laid back, but dh does get more stressed especially since dd was born (nothing to do with her just his work).

Though I also like yawning monsters theory.

All of the advice starts with 'relax, you will never establish bfing if you are tense' so I think a less generally stressed mother probably would find it easier to breastfeed.

Pondering on my own expereince I can't say that my breastfed child was as a child aged 5 to 10 less anxious than dd1. I do find her strangely able to get over things now as she has a crap life tbh which doesn't seem to bother her as it does me. But the reason she was breastfed was because she could do it and the others couldn't!

Ds was and is very highly strung but then he is like that for other reasons than feeding.

The cobblers bit I thought was the idea that a breast feeding mother has a more nurturiong personality..what about lots of mothers who ff one child and bf another etc? Only 16 months between my first two so I don't think I went from steely prude to earth mother in that time!

Could be a bit of nature(hormones) and nuture(close contact).

But surely a bottle-feeding relaxed mother is going to pass on more relaxed-happy-vibes to her baby than a stressed out breastfeeding mother.??

perhaps well established breastfeeding has a profoundly relaxing and confidence boosting effect on the mother which bottle feeding doesn't..I wonder what the family composition was children wise in these researches

also are mothers who suffer from pnd or other health problems more likely to become ff?

For me there was definitely a 'feel-good' element to bfing, I really enjoyed the closeness to dd and she is a very happy, relaxed baby. But she may have been the same if I had formula fed so who knows?

ds1 breast fed for 11mths worries and stresses about everything.

DS2 mixed fed dead laid back so doesn't apply to mine.

Also I was dead stressed after birth of ds2 due to csec and feelings of failiure due to giving formula so I can't see a pattern atall.

As part of a similar article in The Guardian:

"But research published yesterday in the New Scientist suggests that feeding children exclusively on breast milk for nine months or more appeared to increase their risk of developing allergic conditions. The study, by the Helsinki Skin and Allergy Hospital in Finland, found that, at the age of five, 56% of children with a family history of allergies who had been breastfed for at least nine months were showing allergic symptoms, compared to 20% breastfed for two to six months."

I think this ones a bit of bollox really - DS1 (BFwouldn't say boo to a goose (although has got better since he started in Reception last September).

DS2 (FF)- has no fear, nothing phases him and will probably be doing skydives and bungee jumps as soon as he's old enough -