The Eternal Debate: Breast or Bottle Feeding?

This article was last updated on June 20, 2023

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Is breastfeeding really better than bottle feeding?

It is a long-running discussion: is breastfeeding really better than bottle feeding, or does it not matter that much?

Every month dozens of studies are added and it seems that breastfeeding is increasingly winning over the bottle. However, firm conclusions are very complicated, because comments can be made in almost every study.

Likewise with a new publication in which researchers looked at whether adolescents who were breastfed as babies had better school performance later in life. The answer: yes.

But what if you struggle with it or don’t want to breastfeed. Should you be concerned about such outcomes? NOS op 3 investigated and comes with reassuring conclusions:

Researchers at Oxford University followed about 5,000 British children from the turn of the century to the end of secondary school. They grouped the children according to how long they were breastfed: not at all, a few months, or more than a year. Finally, the researchers compared school performance.

Outcome? Children who were breastfed for more than 12 months were 39 percent more likely to pass their math and English exam than children who were never breastfed. The researchers emphasize that this difference is not necessarily due to breastfeeding alone.

Caveats

Like many other studies on the effects of breastfeeding, this study also has shortcomings. It is very difficult to attribute certain consequences to breastfeeding. The fact that there is a connection does not mean that it is also breastfeeding that causes a certain benefit.

So does the new British study. “The effects are not large and seem to persist if you take socio-economic factors into account,” explains Professor of Early Development at the University of Amsterdam Tessa Roseboom.

But it cannot be ruled out that part of the relationship can also be explained by socio-economic factors.” Highly educated women are more likely to breastfeed, so it may just be that they have smarter children. It doesn’t have to be breastfeeding.

Experiments

Roseboom explains what research into breastfeeding looks like in an ideal situation: experiments provide the best evidence. Then researchers can create two groups in which the only difference is whether or not they are breastfed. Fate determines what test subjects have to do for a study and personal preference does not play a role.

In the case of breastfeeding research, this would mean that mothers are not allowed to decide for themselves whether to breastfeed their babies. “Just find women who want to do that.”

This was once done in a study in Belarus. “We mainly looked at the effects in the short term,” says Roseboom. As a result, it can be said with certainty that breastfed children are less likely to develop otitis media, gastrointestinal infections, and respiratory infections.

This is a few percent. As with otitis media: children who were not breastfed had a 6 percent chance of developing this in the first year of life. Babies who did get it, 3 percent. “That seems like a small difference, but it is half the risk of a disease and I think that is a big effect,” says Roseboom. “If you talk about seat belts, for example, and that would cut the risk of injury in half, I think most people would choose it.”

Roseboom also emphasizes: “The chance is still the highest that a child will not get the disease.” And also, “It’s not like you’re giving your child a bad start if you don’t breastfeed.”