The Bennington (Vt.) Banner, March 18:
It’s not news that children who breast-feed longer have higher IQ scores.
It hasn’t been entirely linked to just the nutrition benefits that comes from breast-feeding for longer than 12 months as women who do so are often more attentive to their children’s needs and also often come from families that have the resources to spend more quality time with their children.
But now a new study conducted in Brazil has concluded that not only is long-term breast-feeding conducive to intellectual growth, children who nursed for longer than 12 months also earned more income when they became adults.
Researchers in Brazil launched in 1982 a population-based birth cohort study of neonates, collecting information about their breast-feeding in early childhood. Thirty years later, the researchers went back and collected more information from the 3,493 participants of the 5,914 originally enrolled. That information included IQ, educational attainment and income.
“Breast-feeding is associated with improved performance in intelligence tests 30 years later, and might have an important effect in real life, by increasing educational attainment and income in adulthood,” noted the researchers in The Lancet. The study was funded by Wellcome Trust, International Development Research Center (Canada), CNPq, FAPERGS, and the Brazilian Ministry of Health.
“Breast-feeding has clear short-term benefits for child survival through reduction of morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases,” wrote the authors, and is also associated with an increase of three-and-a-half points on intelligence tests at childhood and adolescence.
While three studies ”“ two conducted in England and one in Denmark ”“ have found a positive association between breast-feeding and intelligence, evidence from those studies has been criticized as focusing on “mothers with high socio-economic position” rather than those with lower status, therefore skewing the results.
“The results of a pooled analysis of four cohort studies from low-income and middle-income countries … did not show consistent associations between breast-feeding duration and number of school years completed, although associations were present in two of the sites,” wrote the authors of the most recent report published in The Lancet. Their study was meant to address some of that criticism.
“Because we neither measured home environment characteristics during childhood nor maternal-infant bonding, we were unable to explore whether the associations identified might be attributable to biological components of breast milk itself, mother-infant bonding, or intellectual stimulation of breast-fed children,” they wrote. “However, scientific literature shows that even after controlling for home environment or stimulation, breast-fed subjects have improved performance in cognitive tests, thus suggesting that breast milk itself has a programming effect on intelligence.”
Studies have concluded that breast milk contains long-chain saturated fatty acids, which are essential for brain development.
“Our finding that predominant breast-feeding was also positively associated with IQ at 30 years is consistent with a biological effect, suggesting that the amount of milk consumed has a role,” wrote the authors. “Because earning ability is associated with both IQ and educational attainment, breast-feeding has been postulated to have a positive economic effect on society as a whole.”
Until this study, they write, that association has been indirect.
“In comparisons of participants who were breast-fed for 12 months or more with those breast-fed for less than one month, the increase in income was roughly … 20 percent of the average income level. Our results suggest that breast-feeding not only improves intelligence up to adulthood, but also has an effect at both the individual and societal level, by increasing educational attainment and earning ability.”
Breast-feeding has been a hot topic for the last few years, and rightly so. Discussions about its importance to childhood development and the ability of mothers to breast-feed whenever, wherever, can be found online, in restaurants and other public places, in hospitals and birthing centers and around the water cooler at work. This latest study should give impetus to expanding resources for breast-feeding mothers and encouraging them to feel comfortable when they need to fulfill a child’s needs. As the researchers concluded, it’s not only good for the kids, it’s great for society.
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