"Breastfeeding Overrated?"

[ShanandBoc]

I agree children are better off with their mothers, that breastfeeding is best etc etc but doesnt mean daycare or formula feeding are dangerous or necessarily bad for that particular child.

Would be nice if people learned how to participate in a adult conversation and consider the feelings of others and how their posts come across. A bit of tact wouldnt go astray

 

[lau86]

Ok mommyjogger I've done a google on the first study and am already finding flaws. What About burge Et al? He says children raised At home are more aggressive! It's fair enough if you want to use these studies to back up your ideas but there are studies that back up mine. Not saying you're wrong just saying there's another side that argues the opposite of what you/ your studies say

 

[MommyJogger]

Ok mommyjogger I've done a google on the first study and am already finding flaws. What About burge Et al? He says children raised At home are more aggressive! It's fair enough if you want to use these studies to back up your ideas but there are studies that back up mine. Not saying you're wrong just saying there's another side that argues the opposite of what you/ your studies say

Would you please expound on the flaws and provide a more extensive citation of Burge et al? It's hard to google(or pubmed)-fu from a single last name. Did you mean Dorli Burge? The guy studying abusive home situations and termination of parental rights on teen aggression?

 

[Miss_Cellany]

Wow, this thread got a bit crazy! I don't really understand where any of it came from because I've just read through it and I don't see anyone berating breastfeeding or saying it isn't the best - no posters, not the article and not the original study. The only thing that says it is the headline of the article which is just sensationalism basically, a common problem in journalism. The study just suggests that maybe, just maybe, some of the bonuses associated with breastfeeding may in fact be as a result of socio-economic conditions that generally go hand-in-hand with breastfeeding rather than the breastfeeding itself. I don't really see why this is bashing breastfeeding or justifying formula feeding in any way.

I said in a previous thread about this that I actually find the study interesting (even though it is flawed, but so is every study into it as there can never, ever be a control group, as I have said previously) as my own family is one where one child was formula fed and the other two exclusively breastfed. Interestingly, my eldest brother who was formula fed is a genius on the IQ scale while me and my other breastfed brother are high but not genius. As stated previously, I think that intelligence is far more likely to be genetic and based on the environment you grew up in rather than anything you were fed for the first 6 months of your life. Perhaps I'm wrong but it just makes more sense to me.

MommyJogger - If you feel you have failed because you had to return to work then I feel really sorry for you. I see that as a pessimistic outlook on life. I so-called 'failed' at breastfeeding by your definition but I personally see it as I succeeded in keeping my son as healthy as I could by making the decision that breastfeeding was not the best for him. The issues I had meant he wasn't eating enough, was constantly hungry and stressed and so was I. If I had tried to feed him regardless he wouldn't have been as healthy initially. Perhaps eventually it would have worked out but that wasn't a risk I was going to take when he was tiny. So I gave up on something that I very very strongly believed it and it broke my heart a little. And before anyone says I needed more support, I really didn't - I had all the support I could ever wish for, professionally and personally.