Oct 06
13
Breastfeeding and IQ
OK, there have been so many conflicting reports and schools of thought on this. Now apparently there are studies to debunk the long standing thought that breast feeding your child will help improve their intellect, or IQ.
Although many like to believe this since breastfeeding definitely has some other undeniable health and well being benefits to our infants, the part about increasing intelligence is not appearing to be true.
The findings were published Wednesday October 4th in the British Medical Journal. It is true that children that were breast fed scored higher on IQ tests given in the study, but that was not a direct relation to the breast feeding itself. Rather, the higher IQ test scores from the children that were breast fed were because of an oustide influence.
Their mothers or parents were from better educated, more affluent backgrounds, and tended to teach their children earlier on – it’s basically a nature vs. nurture thing. These children’s environments happened to correspond to being conducive to learning more, faster.
While scientists have been studying and hypothesizing about the link between breast feeding and IQ scores, the scientist who headed up this most recent and conclusive study on the matter said that the best place to look for the responsible party for the child’s IQ and learning capabilities was still the mother’s IQ.
The reasearchers even went so far as to look at siblings who were breast fed vs. bottle fed, and they found no significant difference in the children’s IQ, with all other factors being the same, so this seems as though it is a fairly accurate study.
