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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the mmmmmmmm-lunch! dept.

In 2013, 81.1 percent of U.S. mothers said they started out breast-feeding their baby. That's up from 75 percent in 2008, and 70 percent in 2000, according to the CDC.

[...] 52 percent of U.S. mothers said they were still breast-feeding their infants when the babies were 6 months old, and 30 percent said they were still breast-feeding when the babies reached 1 year.

How should society handle breastfeeding in public and the workplace? Should there be any restrictions on the age of the child?

Breastfeeding has obvious benefits for a child's development, but breast milk is also a fluid of the body that can carry disease.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mum-still-breastfeeds-daughter-aged-4881835

http://www.livescience.com/55846-breast-feeding-mothers-united-states.html


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  • (Score: 1) by Moof123 on Wednesday August 24 2016, @06:19PM

    by Moof123 (5927) on Wednesday August 24 2016, @06:19PM (#392706)

    +1. The pendulum may have actually swung too far in shaming and guilting mothers. Today mothers face huge pressure to breastfeed, and can be made to feel like failures as human beings if it does not work out. We had issues and had to supplement, in part because the kid was a little tongue tied (web on the bottom of the tongue is too short to properly nurse). My wife really felt like a failure during the first few weeks, and kept getting pressure to try harder, pump, etc. Even after snipping the kids tongue loose production never met demand, something that affected my wife, bother her sisters, and their mother.

    In the end the research we dug up showed that once you controlled for other factors (income in particular) the story for breast milk being being leaps and bounds better for the kid than formula fell apart. A lot of low income families have to put mom back to work, resulting in formula being more common. Low income impacts health and development in a great number of ways, and this seemed to be the dominant reason.

    Do good by your kids, but don't feel like a failure if "best" is not reasonably achievable.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @06:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @06:56PM (#393635)

    +1 to your +1 :-)

    An overall average positive effect in the population does not preclude a neutral or negative effect among some people within that population (heterogeneous treatment effects). The stress involved for those who have difficulty can make the experience negative for them, and this does not contradict that on average, for most people, breastfeeding is the better choice.

    My sister was in a similar situation as your wife Moof, she was not producing enough milk, and he dehydrated her baby before waking up and making the switch to formula. We should not be dogmatic.

    In addition to being overblown in the media, the research about the benefits of breastfeeding is not clear with regard to the mechanisms driving its effects, leaving even informed expecting parents unsure about what is the best course of action.

    I would love to see some good quality research disentangling the effect of the direct physical interaction of holding the baby and the effect of the actual breast milk substance itself. Some kind of RCT (like instrumentalized encouragement scheme, not sure how to design that one) that would compare the pumped breast milk to normal breastfeeding. Even lab experiments with other mammals could be informative. (Anyone else here in public health want to apply for a grant?)

    -Some economist & his pregnant public health phd wife