Breastfeeding improves academic outcomes, study finds
Janaki Mahadevan
Monday, March 14, 2011
Breastfeeding a child for as little as four weeks can improve their educational outcomes, academics have found.
The study undertaken by the University of Oxford and the Institute for Social and Economic Research, at the University of Essex, examined the effect of breastfeeding on children’s cognitive outcomes, from tests in reading, writing and maths at the ages of five, seven, 11 and 14.
The study compared a breastfed baby with one or more babies who were not breastfed, but who had similar characteristics, such as sex, birth weight, mother’s age and marital status, both parents’ job status and education.
The report states that the relationship between breastfeeding and academic outcomes at age 14 is clear. "The relationship is most marked for English, where babies who were not breastfed at all go on to score around one third below average [of the sample] at age 14, while those who were breastfed for a year go on to score well over half higher. Differences in the other subjects are less stark but still large."
Breastfeeding rates are relatively low in the UK compared to elsewhere in the developed world, with around one in three infants exclusively breastfeeding during the first four months of life. The World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding exclusively for six months and alongside solid foods for two years.
The report on the effectiveness of breastfeeding said that while benefits to health were widely recognised, less was known about its impact on cognitive development.
Royal College of Midwives professional policy adviser Janet Fyle said that while the research was interesting and further proof of the benefits of breastfeeding, the UK had a long way to go in normalising breastfeeding in the way other countries had done.
She said: "In Sweden most mothers breastfeed because they are not forced to go straight back to work. In this country we are cutting benefits to single-parent families and poorer people, and mothers have to get back to work and earn a living. So we are restricting them from breastfeeding there, while in society breastfeeding mothers are still getting chucked out of cafés and out of libraries. It's a problem."
But Fyle echoed the point made in the by report co-author Maria Iacovou that no one should be made to feel guilty about not breastfeeding. "It's very easy to make mothers or families feel guilty about the choices they make and that is not in anyone's interest. We need to engage with mothers."
