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The UK study is one of the first to
show that breastfeeding improves children’s cognitive skills. Photograph: Katie
Collins/PA |
Analysis of data on almost 6,000 children found breastfeeding boosted brain development in disadvantaged mothers’ babies
According
to a British study, breastfeeding directly improves the speaking, drawing, and
cognitive abilities of children of disadvantaged moms.
If
they were nursed for at least three months, the research shows that they
perform 8% better on cognitive tests up to the age of seven than those who were
bottle-fed.
The
children of low-income women benefit from breastfeeding in terms of brain
development, and as a result, they begin primary school better prepared than
kids who are fed formula.
The
results offer important new proof that breastfeeding is beneficial for kids. Nevertheless,
while previous studies have mainly linked intake of breast milk at an early age
to physical health, this new paper – based on analysis of data on almost 6,000
British children – is one of the first to show that it improves their cognitive
skills.
The
study also discovered that women with poor levels of education who gave birth
on the weekend had a lower likelihood of starting their infant on breast milk
due to a lack of staff members who could assist them in forming the habit.
Prof.
Emla Fitzsimons of the University College London Center for Longitudinal
Studies and Prof. Marcos Vera-Hernandez of the economics department conducted
the study. Data on over 6,000 British children born in the UK between 2000 and
2002 who are participants in the Millennium Cohort Study, whose mothers quit
school before turning 17, and who had natural or low-risk births, were
examined.
Fitzsimons
said that their findings on cognitive development were “statistically
significant”.
They
found that, for example, at the age of three, breastfed children scored on
average 9.88 points more at using “expressive language” – in which they are
shown pictures of objects and asked to name them – than the average for all
children, which was 70.4 points.
Three-year-old
breastfed children also scored an average 8.3 points more for “school
readiness” – command of core skills involving literacy and numeracy – than the
average among all children of that age, of 22.2.
The
same differences were seen when children were tested again at the age of five,
and were also seen at that age in an assessment of visuo-spatial skill – their
ability to replicate a design using pattered squares – and “pictorial
reasoning”, in which they analyse pictures.
The
study, published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, says:
“Our results, which apply to mothers with relatively low levels of education,
are striking. We find strong effects of breastfeeding in children’s cognitive
development, the effects of noncognitive skills are inconclusive, and we find
no evidence of effects on health during this period of childhood.”
Better-off
women are much more likely to breastfeed than poorer ones. The UK-wide Infant
Feeding Survey of 2010, which contains the most recent data on the subject,
found that only 30% of women who left full-time education at the age of 17 or
18 had breastfed their child for at least four months whereas 56% of those who
left after 18 did so.
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