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It’s well established that breast milk is the best milk for your baby. But a recent finding has added a new twist to the tale. It has emerged that breastfed boys did better at school than their non-breastfed counterparts. When it came to girls, there was not much of a difference.
It turns out that breastfed boys outperformed the non-breastfed boys at arithmetic, writing, and reading. According to a study published in Pediatrics, about 1000 Australian children were studied, and it turned out that infants who were breastfed for at least six months did better at school at the age of ten in comparison to kids who were formula-fed. Academics studied the academic performance of children whose mothers had enrolled in the study years ago at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth, Australia. Academics were studied for various factors such as gender, maternal education, income, and other influences such as whether the child’s parents read to him home.
Through the standardized tests carried out it was found that the boys who were breastfed for at least six months scored an average of 10% higher in math and writing than those boys who’d been breastfed for a shorter duration. The same held good at spelling where these boys scored between 6% and 8% higher in reading than those who were nursed for a short duration. However, girls who were once-breastfed only seemed like they did better. This did not have substantial evidence. But in case of boys, there was a statistically significant difference in the scores.
The study does not prove that breastfeeding exclusively boosts boys’ academic achievement. There were other factors too that were considered. The most important predictor was how much time parents spent reading to their child at an early age.
There is also a link between family income and boys’ performance, alongside the association between mothers’ education levels and boys’ performance. Despite the role of other factors, the association between breastfeeding and performance of the boys is still unquestionable. It goes to show that mother’s milk is the optimum and ‘best’ way of feeding a newborn, irrespective of boys or girls for an exclusive six months period or beyond, as suggested by the lead researcher Wendy H. Oddy, at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth, Australia.
For the research, Oddy and her team kept a track of participating mothers during pregnancy, then assessed their children at regular intervals through the age of 10. But they were not able to gather information as to how often parents read to their kids, in an attempt to assess if other factors such as reading to kids can improve their academic prowess than by breastfeeding a child.
Oddy also believes that boys are more susceptible to adversity during crucial phases of brain development than girls are. Oddy explains that the estrogens in breast milk might that have a protective effect on brain cells might benefit boys more than they benefit girls.
It is also likely that boys benefit more from the mother-child bonding through breastfeeding than girls because boys rely more on maternal attention to help develop their cognitive and language skills.
The effect of breastfeeding on the higher test scores in boys was, however, modest. Therefore, women who cannot breastfeed for prolonged periods could find alternatives to help their children’s development, according to Telethon Institute director Fiona Stanley.
On the other hand, the strong predictor for the test scores was a number of time parents had spent reading with them at the ages of three and five.
Oddy says that breast milk might also contain essential fatty acids that aid in the development of a child’s brain. However, the question as to whether the advantage of better school performance comes from breast milk, per se, still hangs!
