What is really important when you have a baby is to be utterly indifferent to what anyone else thinks of your choices. And that includes all childhood 'experts'.
21
Um. I am an American who lives in Ireland, and birthed two babies here. Ireland has the close to the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe. I breastfed both of my babies. For context, my American mother breastfed all six of her children; all twelve of my nieces and nephews were breastfed.
In Ireland, it is still tangibly uncomfortable to BF in public and women and midwives will often dissuade you from working through the early difficult weeks. (Thank God I was told it gets better!). I STRONGLY believe we are all so fortunate to be able to feed our children, however that happens. But the derisive commentary on the benefits of breastfeeding, data driven or not, is unnecessary and frankly, obnoxious- no more and no less than the agenda pushed by the adamant lactistas amongst us.
There are many benefits to breastfeeding. We are so lucky to be able to feed our babies if we don't want to or can't breastfeed. I'm not sure a lot more needs to be said.
21
No offense, but this entire article seems to have arisen from the author's own guilt, as if she hunted down research to assuage her own regrets/doubts. So many articles on parenting seem to do the same -- offer advice as a way of bolstering one's own choices.
31
I'd feel more confident about the author's conclusions if I did not suspect that they validated her own parenting choices.
Also, is it permissible to follow one's own heart, instead of the data? I really don't want a "data-driven guide to motherhood," thanks.
28
I beast-fed my child but my own mother did not breastfeed me. I had a good relationship until the day she died. My child and I have had a reasonably good relationship as well. Even though I was fed Similac and Gerber’s, I was almost never sick and never missed a day of school because I never caught a cold. Zero allergies as well. My kid has seasonal allergies and was plagued with ear infections despite many years of perfect La Leche League and wholesome natural food compliance. As far as I was able to observe, there was zero long term difference between the two feeding techniques. And, to be honest, if I had not been able to breastfeed a theoretical second child, it would have felt zero guilt. To those women who can’t breastfeed, please don’t worry about it. Seriously.
13
I like these kinds of articles. I have 6 kids, ranging from 40 to 16. There was a 16 year gap between the first two and the last four. It's so nice to be an old experienced parent.
Five were bottle fed, they were adopted. One was breast fed. I found it easier after the initial month of pain. I just used big shirts and tried to keep him from pulling it up too far.
I did some sleep training and definitely see the benefit and I also did the family bed, let the sleep where they drop. It depended on the kid and family circumstances.
No arterial blood, no loss of consciousness, they are breathing.... it's probably all right.
Would you let your husband, co-worker or friend treat you the way your child treats you, and others? If the answer is NO, make some changes. There are too many self absorbed, bratty children with doormat, guilt ridden parents.
11
As a parent of grown children who do not remember that once I let them cry all night, compared their toilet training abilities (one of them was BRILLIANT, the other was clearly delayed), and took helicopter parenting to amazing heights, all I can say is I am willing to provide material when they are ready to write their “Tell All Book.”
5
"One woman told me her doctor had warned her that by quitting breast-feeding, she was costing her child three I.Q. points."
This, simply put, is nonsense.
As a mother in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I tried to breastfeed my sons. It worked for a while, but then I had no milk for reasons that are not clear. Not every mother, no matter how motivated, can breastfeed successfully.
Professionally, I know quite a bit about I.Q. testing. Since an IQ score is an estimate, not a specific number, the statement that a child will lose 3 IQ points is specious. Professionals consider IQ to be a range with a standard deviation of 15 points, so a child who tests, like mine did, at 130 could have an IQ as low as 115 or as high as 145, or anywhere in between.
Bottom line commonsense suggestions: Do the best you can based on what you and your family can handle. Don't worry about being perfect. Babies are durable and generally turn out fine even when parents are imperfect.
5
Talk about cherry picking data to support your thesis!
18
It is completely inaccurate to say that all studies demonstrating the harm of sleep training come from Romanian orphanages. This entire field is replete with hundreds of studies that this author, as an economist, appears to have never read. People who are uninformed in this field should not dispense harmful parenting advice. It is wrong.
17
I have an 11 month old and for the first 6 months, I was stressed out about everything... Breastfeeding stigma in Africa is so real, strangers would meet me on the plane with my son and say "I hope you are exclusively breastfeeding". Even now, 6 months after I switched to formula, I get comments like, oh you must be breastfeeding, well done, baby looks so healthy 😂. All lies. At the peak of my stress, a friend told me two things that have become my mantra. "breast is not best, fed is best". Second was "a mentally healthy mummy is the best thing for a baby"...little else matters. happy mummy equals happy baby. with that in mind, I threw all traditions and expectations to the wind and I've enjoyed being a mom ever since.
93
This is a useful antidote to websites claiming to provide expert advice and strong opinions. But must we read future articles in academic and scientific journals or are there reliable website we can refer to -- webmd.com? mayoclinic.org? that accurately distill relevant information? It's important to note that the article does not focus on potentially life-threatening issues. I was surprised that the author deferred to her pediatrician on the bee-sting question. I would want to know what reactions to a sting were potentially life-threatening. Maybe an epipen would be a good idea.
1
@Mouse Do you have reason to believe your child is/was alergic to bee-sting? What else would you like to worry about that might or might not cause harm?
2
@RogerWhen I was a child, I was walking barefoot on the grass and stepped on a bee -- on two occasions. Very painful. Quickly, my leg and thigh swelled. I don't remember anything else, but my mother had taken me to the emergency room both times. My child and I have both had swollen throats and difficulty breathing from certain food. I do not, of course "like" to worry. I would also not let a baby crawl around in a rattlesnake-infested area.
3
All this articles and the comments after it proves is that as a society we are seeking validation for our decisions. We are seeking for someone, albeit, anyone to say it’s okay to do what is right for me. While studying psychology, I realized early on that statistics are great and later as social worker I found that evidence based practice is great also but what happens when it doesn’t apply to you or your demographic. We need to stop seeking validation from others, we need to learn the cost and benefits then decide if it is right for you. Life is not meant to be lived this way. How can you enjoy anything if you’re seeking validation then feeling guilty when your choice is not validated. When I had my baby, as a single mom, I decided that every choice I made will be in our best interest.
4
We overthink motherhood. I like this author's point, just do what works and ignore the rest. In one of many angst ridden conversations with my grandmother about how often to feed the newborn; whether or not he was getting enough calories; should I wake him up to feed him; along with a host of other topics, she dryly pointed out that humanity managed without manuals for centuries. Do what came naturally, ignore most people who shuddered when I chose to breastfeed in public (discreetly) and just do it. However, she did add one rather pithy comment - why on earth would I wake up a sleeping, contented baby because I thought he may be hungry. Enjoyed motherhood, enjoyed working, and learned not to overthink things...
11
Thank you for this excellent article.
4
Dear departed dad watched me pick up a thrown pacifier off the floor and put it in the dishwasher to sterilize it. I had several others to add to it from my twin sons.
He scolded me for worrying about germs and said, "Do you think all the mothers of pro football players sterilized the pacifiers? Rinse them off and stop worrying so much".
That was the end of 6 months of panic for me.
6
Could we stop awfulizing everything? Decisions of parenthood are important, but are they always agonizing? If so, is the agony always necessary, or merely induced by media hype that tells us that they *should* be agonizing?
4
I think everyone needs to forgive themselves a little....
7
These studies have no relevance or value when not sorted for each distinct/separate ethnic/racial group. As we all know, each group is completely different from another. This is known as reality, the way the world is. Please proceed accordingly..
2
With an infant son in Taiwan, our nanny, Hwei-Fang, put my one-year-old son over the toilet bowl whenever she felt him grunting and tightening his abdominal muscles. It worked! In about two months he was toddling toward the toilet at the right time!
He was breast-fed until he could talk about it. "This is ridiculous, if you can talk about it you shouldn't be doing it!" Our daughter was exclusively NOT breast-fed: "I did it for the first one, not this one too!" nor did she grow up with a Chinese nanny and she learned how (eventually) to use the toilet in LA.
4
No kids = no worries + lots of $$ to live happily ever after.
7
Do what seems right for your child, your family, and you.
Nobody else gets a vote.
5
Just to add an anecdote from a dad's perspective: When my son was born, I was petrified that the choices I made would screw him up. Along about six months in, I had an epiphany: No matter what I chose or did, I *would* screw him up. But on the other hand, within very broad boundaries, no matter what I chose or did, he'd probably turn out ok. I think the same is likely true for other dads and moms.
7
Economically speaking, my perceived risk-benefit ratio was in full swing when I was 12 years old.
It was quite clear to me that being very poor in a third-world country that it would be a much better path to pursue the goal of self-preservation rather than having to manage a feeling of guilt when I could not be sure how I would be able to provide for my child--whether it be food-store-bought or pumped, clothing or shelter to name a few basic needs.
This is excellent. But let's be completely honest - Oster writes:
"These struggles are made worse by the societal, familial and medical testimonies to the many benefits of breast-feeding. "
No, the struggles are made worse by other women. Women /mothers making problems for other women/mothers. Not society and not families. Just mothers who are endlessly preachy and judgey of other mothers. I am a mother of 4. Even my pediatricians over the years 1 man, 2 women were endlessly supportive and sympathetic over my breast-feeding difficulties and decision to bottle feed rather than torment my babies and drive myself mad But other mothers were a nightmare. If mothers would stop judging other mothers in the false spirit of what's best for the baby. The truth is babies are very resilient.
21
Here's the next study; what is the effect on children of having parent(s) who are overly attached to social media? Dads who play their online games late into the night? Moms who cross the street with one child in a stroller and another holding her coat while she is texting on the phone? The young family seated at the pizza restaurant or at the park's picnic table with the parents glued to their phones, laughing at their friends texts and busy typing while their kids' questions go unanswered?
Distracted parenting; let's hear the next feel good study about that syndrome.
16
It's a shame that mothers have to rationalize behaviors that undermine child wellbeing. Science experiments cannot ethically or realistically test the effects of our full human evolved nest which is largely social mammalian, evolved more than 30 million years ago as an adaptation. The evolved nest for young children includes soothing perinatal experiences, nearly constant touch (carrying, holding), responsiveness to keep baby in optimal arousal conditions (while the brain is rapidly growing every second), breastfeeding for on average 4 years, multiple responsive adult caregivers, self-directed free play, positive climate and social support. For each component there is animal research and some human research on neurobiological effects, a host of correlational studies and some short longitudinal.
Not much of the evolved nest is provided in the USA--the country whose health outcomes are the worst among economically advanced nations. Baselines for child raising, child and adult health, and cultural supports continue to go in the wrong direction. Instead of rationalizing the bad choices parents are led into (by moneyed interests inside and outside of medicine), let's understand humanity's baseline for optimal normal development. To rationally behave contrary to our evolved nest, lifelong longitudinal evidence for every health and socioemotional intelligence variable must be included. Why do we minimize what children need and endure focusing on money-making instead of wellbeing?
9
As a new Dad, I watched my wife go through the agonizing reality that she was unable to produce enough milk to feed our newborn son.
The very simple fact that some women produce little or no breast milk, and that some infants need more milk, is lost on Moms that can feed an army of infants, and "professionals" in the field.
Our son drank 180 mL at each feeding while my wife's friend's infant son born the same day drank only 60mL, and she was able to breastfeed successfully.
The toll on her mental and physical health for being unable to "do the best" for our son was devastating. The pressure from other Moms and "professionals" to "choose" breastfeeding was insurmountable. In spite of lactation specialists coaching, numerous natural remedies, breast pumping devices and even Domperidone - her milk production was insufficient to feed her own baby.
We reluctantly chose to top up our sons breastfeeding times with formula.
My wife suffered from severe postpartum during the first year of our sons life, the effects of which still haunt her today, and our son is now 12. She wonders if the bond between mother and infant was broken because of her postpartum depression.
To the mothers who are unable to breastfeed, it's ok, you are not alone.
And it's ok to use formula, your child will grow up healthy and just fine. That is a fact.
20
I was enjoying reading this article until I got to the statement saying that there doesn't "seem" to be evidence of weight loss or free birth control. I did nurse 4 children, for much longer than Western culture thinks is normal, and I never had my monthly periods return for 18 months. This was free birth control! I realize it doesn't happen for all women, but I believe that depends on amount of time of unrestricted breastfeeding, both day and night. There is a lot to learn, and the book "Breastfeeding and Natural Child spacing" by Shiela Kippley helped me out many years ago. While I agree with much of the article, it's still just more information, some good, some not so good....
8
To many rules. Too much regimentation. Too much emphasis
on others' opinions. We had babies when we were early 20s. They were incorporated in our lives..We did not angst over every new natural growing/learning advancement. I have seen the nervous intense moms, more worried about "doing the right thing" [whatever that is at the time] than about the baby. My child worked in the field for which she was educated...lived alone and then got married. My grandchildren the same. Just plain part of life....get over it.
3
Can we stop with the judging already? Parenting is tough, we do not need to guilt trip new parents in the first place and then try to exonerate them with data. This Judeo-Christian paradigm of "sin" for every possible aspect of life has to stop, starting from breastfeeding to everything else. New parents need support; new mothers need care, acceptance, and love. Let's be the village that raises a child instead of further isolating the woman who just gave birth. Why are we so cruel?
8
I appreciate all the work involved in the research, and, of course, it's not all about the data. Parents need to do what works best for them and their children - data is not the sum and substance of heartfelt relationships.
Or did I miss the tongue-in-cheek part?
1
All of us got here through a million (or whatever) years of evolution and natural selection. "Normal" is a range, not a bumpersticker. Those parents, especially mothers, whose child-rearing actions fell far outside the range, essentially did not end up with children who survived to pass on genetically based proclivities.
Studies can be useful, especially as humans now create and move among many environments. Anecdotal "evidence" is not evidence, ubiquitous internet clickbait notwithstanding, but can be useful to indicate directions for legitimate research. As well, we live in a world of rapidly increasing interacting cultures, where parental rights, communal responsibility, and a dozen other things are viewed differently depending on one's culture. Though peer pressure tends to be a lousy way to make any decision, it is real, and its effect on behavior is real. That cannot be discounted.
Bottom line for me: yes, some things are better and/or more efficacious than others, and lines should be drawn by both parents and community. However, a little humility, less self-righteous certainty, and the self-discipline to understand that opinion and evidence, as well as correlation and causation, are fundamentally different entities, are not merely justified but, in the end, will help to produce "better" children and less anxious parents.
3
@Steve Fankuchen Studies are useful - if you can understand the actual scope of the study and can competently evaluate the conclusions. Most people can't, though.
No mention in the benefits of breastfeeding section as far the antibodies and health benefits passed from mother to infant ? Or the contamination and health risks run when babies are fed formula ?
6
@Berlin Breastfeeder Can you link to those studies that you know about?
2
I have two kids. One is biological and one is adopted. One was breast fed, the other not. One grew up on organic food, the other did not. One I did the sleep training with, the other I did not. For one, I worked part time, and for the other I was a stay at home mom. Now my kids are 23 and 14. They are both bright, intellectually curious, and happy. That's my data.
10
What is NOT discussed in this article is the research that demonstrates that breastfeeding is essential for proper oral and facial development. Breast feeding encourages the development of a healthy tooth structure, a healthy lower jaw (mandible) development and a healthier (arguably more pleasing) facial structure. Also, suckling from the artificial nipple on a bottle does not exercise the correct tongue muscles to encourage proper swallowing. This research is relatively new and many physicians and even dentists are not necessarily aware of how critical breastfeeding is proving to be for healthy mouth and facial development.
8
@Dr. Rebecca Malamed
My children were bottled fed. Their faces and mouths are just fine. And they grew up to be happy healthy adults.
9
@Dr. Rebecca Malamed
Citations/links to the research, please.
4
As an example nobody could say that anything would effect IQ to three points, I bet the test has a larger variation than this. Real research applies to groups, not to individuals either.
5
Really?
We need scientific data to know that babies will eventually stop crying and to determine the pros and cons of breast feeding?
I'm not sure if I should get a good night's sleep.
I'll have to consult the data.
1
The elephant in the room here is the fact that breastfeeding is apparently not seen, by the vast majority, as natural and beautiful. How strange. And odd that a professional economist looks at incremental data (being isolated in a closet to breastfeed) while missing the large picture entirely (that there is something wrong with a society that finds breastfeeding offensive). The shaming of breastfeeding mothers is a cultural problem. This young mother should never have let herself be shoved into a closet!
11
@Rose It might be natural, but for some, it is not beautiful, it seems; they have problems. Don't judge seems to be part of the point of the article.
3
I would be far more interested in reading about Dr. Oster's struggles deciding whether to have children at all or how others should approach the question of whether to be a parent. What cost-benefit analysis did she employ. What does she recommend for others?
Simply put, in light of the relatively high probability that you may spend hours night after night carrying a screaming baby around, what are the compensating factors?
Future rewards when the child is grown up? Maybe. But economists discount very heavily any expected return that is decades away. In the meantime, when the crying stops, whining is very likely to start, followed by demands, disrespect, and high risk behavior. Let's not forget the estimated $500K a child costs over the course of their lifetime.
Yes there may be rewards down the road. The child may be kind, charming, helpful and generous. But the child might also be cruel and selfish or simply needy and dependent.
There's another important factor that those considering procreating should consider - our planet's health. It ain't good. Our once blue-green ball of life is fast becoming a dirty gray ash heap. Will we be happy leaving this to our offspring.
So Dr. Oster how should people approach the all-important question of whether to have children? How did you?
1
The incidence of juvenile diabetes in non-breast fed children is much higher than those who have been. That alone should tip the scales.
4
Parents worry way too much. I did too - but not nearly to the extent of the author. Who the heck breastfeeds in a closet? I am pretty reserved, but I breastfed without blinking on planes, in malls, in restaurants etc, covered for the most part by a shawl. No biggie if little hands pulled it down.
And sleep training? The critics gave me pause but I decided that my sanity came first (life jackets!) and it worked like a charm for the first; I did it much sooner with the second.
3
I HATED breastfeeding, and despite the shaming attempts of the breast-feeding mafia did it for only 2 weeks before bailing out. After all, I had to go back to work as a third year resident in internal medicine in six weeks. Never regretted it. It was frustrating and awful. My bottle fed daughter now has professional degrees, an IQ north of 150 and never had diarrhea or an ear infection in her life. Some day if she WANTS to breast feed I'm ok with it but could never really encourage it. Blech.
9
My favorite from when - oh so long ago - I was raising children was from a mother who had complained to the doctor "The book says ...." The doctor replied: Maybe your daughter's not reading the same book."
7
Another taboo is to NOT feel bad about having had a cesarean section. I had to have one due to failure to progress after 20+ hours of labor. Sure, it wasn't planned, and I was groggy when they gave me my baby, but it happened. I have had several women express feeling sorry for me that I had a cesarean section. I have even read in posts like these where women years later are still carrying sorrowful feelings about not having given birth vaginally. Really? My goodness, enjoy your new baby and move on.
8
Seems from this article that breast feeding in a closet is the problem.
I was waiting outside a supermarket in Namibia when a young woman with a two year child came along and stopped to chat with the two security guards. The child fussed, the woman opened her shirt, brought out a breast and latched the child to it ... without even pausing the conversation. No closet required.
8
@Gerard The baby was screaming at a wedding, so maybe it was ok- and kind to those at the wedding ceremony - to use a closet. I doubt it harmed the child.
3
This is the most sane and balanced read of data and parenting I’ve ever encountered. What on earth are the commenters riled up about— she supports you all!
6
The best thing about breast feeding is no buying formula and no washing bottles. Just whip it out. Very time consuming though!
3
"When I was pregnant and I imagined myself breast-feeding, I usually pictured myself out to brunch with some friends. When the baby was hungry I’d pop on my color-coordinated nursing cover, and she’d latch right on while I enjoyed my mascarpone French toast."
Umm...did Ms. Oster take a breastfeeding class? That would be useful to know because it doesn't sound like she did.
2
Terrific article. " Breast-feeding isn’t going to ..... How do we know? Because if it did, it would be really obvious in the data and in everyday life." This is the classic question that is never asked as often as it should be. If vegans have less cancer and heart disease, etc... well, then what do vegans die of? They must die otherwise there'd be 150 year old vegans. Same diseases, but later than meat eaters. Still it's healthier to be a vegetarian-variant then either a vegan or paleo.. so say the CDC stats.
Is breastfeeding better? Seems that it is, which makes sense. But should not being able to breastfeed bad? Clearly it isn't. So where does all the hyper-inflated benefits come from? It's not science-- it's some need to guilt trip others. The other 'statistic' that is beyond the scope of the article: when children reach adolescence their behavior and abilities begin to resemble their friends more than their parents or siblings. It's like you've done all this good stuff, feel guilty about all this other stuff...and then this stranger replaces your child. I think we all understand: do what you can, you will fail, try again; and at 14 your kid is going to come home and tell you that you are completely wrong about everything--and that you're a terrible parent. As a teacher I can assure you, you will not harm them in the least if you burst out laughing.
4
@Will N "when children reach adolescence their behavior and abilities begin to resemble their friends more than their parents or siblings. It's like you've done all this good stuff, feel guilty about all this other stuff...and then this stranger replaces your child."
Oh, yes.
Anyone who thinks these microdecisions they are agonizing over when their children are infants will make any kind of a difference once their kids hit puberty is totally fooling themselves.
3
Breast feeding is better for babies.
Period.
This article cherry picked data to serve the author's own reactions.
8
comments like this are 1) patently untrue and 2) make mother's who chose not to feel like garbage. I see this in my office. Once I tell them they aren't bad mom's, and that they need to make the choice that works for them, they feel enormously better. Some cry because of all the guilt they had been feeling.
10
Very nice article. Thank you.
2
In 1981 I took the train from California to Iowa and back with an 8 week old baby, crazy yes I know! The best part of breastfeeding is that the milk is always fresh and at the right temperature. No bottles to wash, no heating formula in the middle of the night, less to schlep. There is nothing like breast feeding for convenience if it works for you. Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty either way, bottle or breast. Women’s breasts and uteruses are always fodder for everyone else’s opinions.
14
Being a former elementary teacher with 2 kids that are now in college:
1. Everyone has a parenting opinion from their own experience.
2. Their is no “right” way or “wrong” way.
3. No one has written or can write the “perfect” book for for parents in how to raise children.
2
I did a data analysis of this article and found 9 mentions of "mom," 14 of "mother," but only 1 mention of "dad" and 0 of "father."
The article says it's about "parenting."
What gives?
2
@Ames Most of it deals with breastfeeding, so... But point well-taken.
2
Instead of cherry picking studies to justify her parenting choices, perhaps the author should look at studies from her own university.
https://news.brown.edu/articles/2013/06/breastfeeding
3
@Melissa So I'm guessing this article got posted on a pro-breastfeeding site and that's why so many of you are flooding in to comment on this one part of the article, which is actually about many different topics? This kind of online "mobbing" is now transparent to the rest of us, and thus pretty ineffective. If you and your fellow advocates want to persuade people about the merits of your position, this is not the way to do it.
Additionally: I breastfed, but acknowledge that the experience I had is not the experience others had. Other people making a different choice than the one you made takes nothing away from the merits of your own choice. In other words, someone choosing to formula feed does not mean your choice to breastfeed is invalidated or marginalized in any way. Does that perspective change how you view the issue?
17
@A. You guessed wrong. I actually read this on the NY Times, because I read this paper every morning. I'm not part of a mob, just a person who knows how to do critical reading and understands this author did not present a balanced view. I decided to see what her own university said. I hope you read the article I posted. If you'd like I could find many, many more. The facts are the facts. How a woman chooses to feed her baby is her own choice, And it never changes the fact that human milk is a unique, living substance that contains antibodies, promotes optimal gut health, changes throughout the course of a feeding, changes throughout the course of a baby's life, and is the norm for humans. It also doesn't change the fact that we live in a culture that does not support women or breastfeeding and makes it very difficult for many mothers. And to top it off, we have corporations (big pharma and formula) and lobbies (dairy) who constantly try to skew the science to make it sound like breastfeeding is not the norm for human beings. I can find you studies that refute the other parts of this author's article as well.
1
@Melissa Have you cherry-picked one article? She does site a meta analysis, so...
5
<> Does she think humans are the only nursing mammals? As a horse breeder I need to feed my lactating mares about TRIPLE the ration of a performance horse in hard work to keep them in good milk and at a decent weight (not skinny). As a nursing mother myself, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain an ounce. Honestly, I question the IQ of any mother who would try feeding her baby in a100 degree closet. That’s just plain stupid and going way out of your way to make breast feeding difficult.
3
@LI'er Posting vituperative comments like this isn't going to persuade people your perspectives are correct; it just points out your own lack of empathy.
7
Wow, rather than teaching people about pubmed and doing their own research, looks like we can just throw the baby out with the bath water.
1
Why is it that every time a career focused working professional mom or dad have a newborn for the first time in middle age they feel the urgency to critique things like breastfeeding or sleeping arrangements etc etc. and the NYTimes always allows them a trite piece as though they are experts.
Honestly, the females of nearly all mammals have been birthing and caring for babies for thousands of years, (and hopefully it’ll continue if we haven’t completely destroyed our planet).
So please have your babies and do what you feel is best for your life circumstances, BUT please for the love of the Goddess STOP trying to diminish breastfeeding and in the process diminish the inherent value of the beautiful female body and her miraculous life creating and sustaining attributes, just so you don’t have to feel guilt about your personal and economic choices.
It unwittingly feeds into a misogynist narrative of the female as linked to the feminine, which has made female bodies fair game for oppressive right wing policies.
8
@Issy She states that there seems to be only negligible benefit - that is not diminishing those who want or need to breastfeed - just don't assume you must or cause harm.
3
That was a badly needed and balanced article.
1
Even by the standards of today's journalism, Emily really shows an impressive ability to GLAZE over massive amounts of QHR, big data, and what has become textbook biology with respect to how ESSENTIAL it is to breastfeed. Your child will have a higher IQ, lower incidence of dozens of diseases, AND you can significantly reduce your risk of breast cancer? Also it's free? Spend 10 minutes on NCBI for real evidence and not this opinion mumbo jumbo
5
Stop with the agonizing!
1
My experience correlates with the results of the study cited about breastfeeding infants having stronger protection from GI infections than infants who are not breast-fed but not necessarily better resistance to other types of bugs going around. My daughter who was in part-time day-care starting at four months and exclusively breastfed (possible only because the day-care was located in my office building) had no GI illnesses until she was over a year old when cow milk was introduced to her diet. The other babies in the day-care, some of whom were still being breastfed part-time, all became ill with two different nasty GI bugs during this period. But other than a few days of discomfort, those babies were just fine. I noticed no reduction in the rate at which my daughter contracted other illnesses such as respiratory infections compared with the other babies. I was able to make breastfeeding work after a LOT of discomfort in the beginning due to a flexible work schedule and proximity to the on-site day care where I worked -- amenities not offered to most working mothers. Without this kind of flexibility it is almost impossible for working mothers to breastfeed their infants for any extended period of time if they want to do so.
I also "sleep-trained" my daughter during nap time around 7 or 8 months when she was clearly exhausted and cranky but refused to fall asleep. After two days of this she was napping like a champ and we were all much happier afterward.
3
humility starts at birth..
2
Thanks for the article. Just curious, why did you nurse your baby in a closet?
@Elizabeth Because the baby was screaming at her brother's wedding.
5
What kind of cruel, heathen, misogynist society would make a woman believe that she should have to hide in a closet in order to breastfeed her baby? Oh yes, that's 21st century America.
1
This article seems biased against breastfeeding because the author had difficulty. It fails to mention is the economy of breastfeeding and the massive time saving. You don't have to wash bottles, baby formula is expensive and you don't have to heat water and sterilized items. You do not need modesty covers you simply pull up your shirt. For women who find it difficult or painful, there should be no guilt, but mothers, especially poor mothers, breastfeeding should be encouraged. There is also no mention of the immunity benefits and I think there are plenty of studies on this. As for the rest, the best advice is to relax, your kid will sleep through the night when they're adults (and through the day when they're teenagers), they will likely not poop in their pants. I did know one parent decided to let her kid decide about potty training and waited until he was five, the result was that he didn't have sufficient control when he went to school and he had numerous embarrassing accidents, that led to serious health issues, because he learned to hold it is Sleep train, yes, get some sleep, your kid will thank you for it. I had one friend who wanted to include their kid in everything and didn't believe in napping, I saw that kid literally fall on his face from exhaustion. What kids need most are routines, they like to know what to expect. If they have some quirks that aren't dangerous who cares. I have two kids, couldn't that couldn't be more different and that's ok too.
2
Just a brief comment about the "unnatural" world in which we live and raise our children.
Primates, including us, are group-living animals and as we evolved in the Pleistocene, about 3 million years ago until the last dozen centuries, we didn't raise our babies alone.
Members of the group, especially relatives and young females without children of their own, were eager to hold, cuddle, calm, and play with a new baby.
Today, mom and dad usually live alone in their home and balance work and child-rearing in a setting that is very, very different from the way our ancestors lived.
We didn't evolve to live as we do, and certainly not to raise our children as we do.
Child rearing is hard and the best advice in this column is to figure out what works for your particular family, mom included, because you are, by definition, living in a world you were not made for.
Best of luck as you work this out - it's hard, sometimes very hard, but you're doing it because it's very rewarding!
5
My son is almost 13, so I get to view all of these discussions about what's "best" and how parents can do the absolute right thing absolutely all the time with a certain degree of nostalgia.
Mommy boards were alive and well during my pregnancy and son's infancy, and I remember the raging debates about breast vs. formula, circumcision, working outside the home, babywearing, sleep training, etc. I saw women who said that in their outside lives were highly-educated professionals, PTA presidents, mothers to several children, etc. absolutely savage other women who professed that they were making a choice the other mom considered to be "wrong."
12 years later, I look at my son and my son's friends and I couldn't tell you the difference between the ones who were breastfed and who weren't, who was worn in a sling and who wasn't, who had to cry it out. I made certain choices; other moms made other choices. My son's been with the same kids since kindergarten so we've been able to observe the kids grow across many years. He's a good, healthy kid, smart with decent grades that could be better if, in the words of one teacher, he wouldn't spend so much time talking about Legos and Star Wars with his friends. The parents of his friends report getting much the same feedback. So. Life is long, y'all. Parenting isn't as long but there are so many choices you will face. My advice to new parents is to reserve some mental and emotional energy for the road ahead. Infancy is just the beginning.
7
I'm a twin and my mother wasn't able to breastfeed both of us constantly so she used formula. I found this article to be well-informed and I enjoyed the mention of statistic rendering how children with more affluent parents have higher IQs. I think that wealth discrepancy isn't talked about as much as it should be by mothers. The cost of formula and diapers and baby food and menstrual products, things that are necessary, are problems that need to be dealt with.
2
It is too easy to data mine and follow a confirmation bias where human studies are concerned. Controlled randomized primate studies would be more valid. Superseding the conversation is the wide gap between those trained in science and those with "a little learning", summarized by the aphorism CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSALITY
3
I felt a strong bias probably from the writers own choices.
2
I love data and believe in evidence-based practice in science and medicine. But, amongst all the data-derived information in this interesting and informative article, what stands out is the image of a mother trying to breastfeed in a closet. I don’t need a data set to reach a conclusion on why the author found breastfeeding hard. How very sad.
5
I agree completely about the image. Thank you for pointing it out.
@Belle Hatfield At a wedding. With a screaming child. What is the mystery?
3
This article doesn’t mention all the recent research demonstrations the role of breastmilk in establishing a healthy gut microbiota for life. It’s not about the number of ear infection your child has as an infant — it’s about developing an organ that is crucial for most aspects of health, throughout life.
4
Here in Seattle, we have a program called PEPS - Program for Early Parenting. It’s a program that matches new parents together with a facilitator. You meet weekly at a different parent’s house for 8 weeks.
This more than anything saved us in our first 6 months with a newborn.
It takes a village! I wish more cities did this.
6
This article, in addition to bringing up some interesting data, shows that modern parents are often blindsided by the difficulties of parenting, especially mothering. I sympathize with both modern moms and children (having been both the child of a working mother and a mother working part time). Our culture seems so inhospitable to both. We need better socio-economic supports for parents, and more relaxed work arrangements for both parents--work arrangements that acknowledge that our future depends on a population of well-cared-for children.
But maybe, also, we should ask our older children, so many of whom are reputedly depressed or anxious, whether they experience a basic, internal comfort from early feelings of security that helps them in life. If they don't know what that means, we're in trouble.
1
Breastfeeding can be really difficult, especially in the first days or weeks. Many mothers, nonetheless, persist, for reasons that have little to do with their take on the scientific evidence or feelings of guilt. It's what they want to do, what is important to them, and often, in the long run, the easier path.
Yes it's wrong to make mothers feel guilty over choosing formula over breastmilk. But lets also support women (both practically and emotionally) when they persevere with breastfeeding, despite the difficulties.
Today there is much more practical help for breastfeeding mothers, in the form help at the hospital, clinics, information on the internet. This is real progress.
2
Congratulations to Emily Oster for this essay. It is a wonderful picture of what most of the 21st century parents experience through their parenthood lives. It shows they don't have the best choice for breast-feeding or sleep training but the choice which is possible for that moment. I think if the parents could be less anxiety in parenthood, more cheerful, more happy, and more balanced would be the kids.
4
This editorial is opening up a can of worms. My Ph.D. dissertation was on behavioral states of human milk fed and formula fend infants up to 8 weeks. I analyzed data collected in the home every 15 seconds for 7 hours. The results showed that breast fed infants had spent a more time alert than bottle fed and one can assume that creates more opportunity for learning. In terms of sleep training, it is very difficult to force infants and children into a sleep pattern when melatonin takes three months to produce day/night rhythms. Also, co-sleeping versus infants sleeping alone has to be considered. Infants cry less in cultures that carry the baby and co-sleep instead of putting babies in cribs alone or carrying the baby in a plastic device. My two cents.
8
@Lois steinberg Where is is your research published? We would need s lot more info (how many homes, from which demographics, and exactly how your data was collected, for starters) to be able to be able to evaluate your conclusions.
3
It seems this type of article supposes most mother’s have similar choices. In my experience many do not. My last child was born when I was in my early 40’s, I was single and fortunately had an education that allowed me to work and get by, just. This child was in daycare, well vetted, from 8 weeks on. She was “colicky”, from 2 weeks til forever it seemed! I breast fed the 8weeks we were home, but work was not conducive to continuing. The gist of this comment is that love and support is all a lot of mothers can provide, while trying to provide the necessities. Sometimes you luck out and it works, and sometimes it takes 30 years to see that. This weekend she became engaged to a very nice person, have never seen her so happy. Both of them teach in urban schools. A bit ago I asked her why she picked that demographic to teach? Her answer was that she wanted to pay back/forward, for her white privilege. So, mothers, it’s not over til it’s over, and doing everything “right” is not the only way!
6
Balanced, articulate article - mention of causality sorely needed - unfortunately, not scholarly in discussing immune and other established health benefits of breastfeeding. Hopefully readers will search more thoroughly for this missing data before deciding not to breastfeed.
3
Excellent, valuable article.
My brother is 13 months older than me. My presence on this earth is to prove breast feeding does not confer birth control!
11
Case example: I am an only parent father, mom passed at birth, my daughter (now 8 years old) was never breast fed; I was very concerned about this. She is now brilliant, (above grade level math), intuitive, creative, athletic, and has an exceptional immune system, never even had a fever (knock on wood...). Raised entirely on formula. On the sleep side of things--think about this: When a child "cries it out" at an early age, they are essentially in a state of terror around their vulnerability, a 0-2 year old child is prey, instinctively, so any "capacity" they gain from this experience is that of learning to numb themselves to cope with emotional pain and fear. How many of us have struggled with adults who habitually fall on this strategy to deal with pain in relationships? Wonder where that habit was established....
4
@Scott Hayden Beall We'll need to keep wondering - I doubt there is any way to test this implied hypothesis.
2
This is the first time I have seen someone easing their parent-guilt by using data (which is quite biased). Someone should teach these researchers what qualitative research is and why we need them when it comes to parent-child relationship which is not simply a collectable data.
4
As parents we try to justify the manner in which we raise our children. Not doing so would be unbearable.
3
Time stretches immeasurably during a first infant's first three months. To a newly breastfeeding mum, her struggles feel as though they will go on for the rest of her life. She wonders, "Why did everyone go on and on about the +/- 24 hour delivery when it's breastfeeding that's the real challenge in a new mum's life?"
The best advice to give a new mum in the throes of her first breastfeeding experience is to promise her that even though it is impossible to imagine in her current sleeplessness, little bits will settle into a more reasonable routine in 12-14 weeks.
3
I wish there had been some reference in an article by an economist on the economic benefits of breastfeeding. No bottles or formula to buy. Those costs mount up quickly. There can be significant barriers to breastfeeding for low income mothers, but the choice presented here is the one faced by middle class and up mothers. The same thing occurs in the discussion of the choice to work or not. For many, this is not a choice.
5
@Laura Dwight That wasn't the cost/benefit analysis she was doing - but you could pretty easily. Her analysis was on the perceived outcomes on the child's future, on a few specified measures, as compared to the research she sites.
It would be interesting to see data, if any exist, on dietary diversity when toddlers start eating the family diet. Having been a fussy eater myself, with one sister who ate everything, and having raised a child who ate everything, I am watching my grandchildren’s food choices with interest. By all accounts both their parents ate everything. They differ a little from each other but generally stick to a very limited range of foods, despite parental encouragement.
On breastfeeding, we cannot emphasize too much the health value to the mother. While the data are less strong, there’s pretty good evidence that prolonged breastfeeding also reduces the risk of ovarian cancer. As someone with a high level of risk for hereditary ovarian and breast cancers - detected through genetic testing when I was 65 - I reckon that prolonged breastfeeding may have contributed to saving my life by delaying the onset of cancer.
2
Although the focus is breastfeeding- many babies now treated for “colic” ( crying more than 3 hrs, 3 days etc-)- and which doesn’t respond to bouncing, holding, walking, driving in the car- need SWADDLING. Tightly wrapped arms and legs against its body.This triggers the relaxation reflex in infants. As a professional in the field of infant development- these babies are called “purple babies “- because of the color they can turn from the exhausting effort of crying. I know a pediatrician who prescribed Prilosec for a 2 month old, even when radiology barium study showed ‘no reflux’. Swaddling worked. When a medical condition is ruled out, I have never seen swaddling NOT work. We need to get back to basics. Educate new moms how to swaddled effectively. It takes practice. Compare the rate of colic in industrialized countries to developing countries. I feel so badly for the author, and so many new moms, who don’t have pediatricians who can teach the basics to soothe inconsolable infants. Not being able to soothe your child can harm the mother child bond.
5
Happiest Baby on the Block was the most important book I read for how to survive and thrive (mom, baby and dada) during the first few months of baby’s life. Swaddle!!!
2
@Mallory Buckingham. As a recently retired pediatrician, this article is of great interest to me, especially the mention of (gastroesophageal) reflux. In this era of conveyor-belt medical care, nervous parents want definitive solutions for anxiety-provoking symptoms in normal infants from anxious, over-worked, and often, poorly informed providers. The solution for both parties is pathologizing a common problem with a serious-sounding diagnosis and a prescription of a fancy-sounding drug with a name generated by committees and lawyers. “Reflux” is an example of this. The truth is that all humans reflux, especially infants. That is why they “spit up”. With extremely rare exception, especially in otherwise normal, growing, thriving infants, reflux is no more than a messy problem and resolves over time with growth. Babies with symptomatic reflux are usually miserable and certainly require timely evaluation. Barium x-rays are not appropriate for thriving spitters or “colicky” babies, nor are medications and antibiotics; reassuring conversation about normal newborn and infant development, practical tips, parent-provider bonding (we’re in this together and I’m available to you) and follow up are.
3
I encourage people to do what they feel best about with their children. It is my belief that if we take care of the physical needs of our baby/child, they will grow up. I do not think that much of what we do affects whether or not they are successful in life. I do think it affects what kind of success they have. What one person considers success may be another's failure. Just like my trash is your treasure. I do prefer the world that I believe is created by a stay at home parent that breastfeeds and co-sleeps is more peaceful and harmonious.
All I could think while reading this piece was that I wish the author and I could be friends! As a mathematician, I really appreciate her excellent explanations on how to put the data into perspective.
2
Question: Did you have a husband or partner? You never mention him/her. In my experience as a parent and grand-parent: The most important factor is a strong, stable home with two loving, dedicated, nurturing parents who can share the load and stress of working parenthood. Then, most of these minor factors that you discuss get made as a matter of course or necessity e.g. when it's Dad's turn, baby gets bottle fed.The down-side to your article, it's all about you.
4
The number 1 reason so many babies are NOT breast fed is economic! This article does not make clear how many mothers would love the time and space to breast feed their child but they have to work full time to support that child and the rest of their family. This is the real world for so many new parents and it comes with all the mentioned anxieties plus who will care for the new baby when the mother is at work.
5
in the community where I live on the coast of Maine, a woman can stop to nurse any time anywhere. This idea of societal pressure is something some women impose on themselves.
@Etienne Perret
Oh dear. No, a woman working at Target cannot just "stop to nurse anytime anywhere."
Those of us with professional white collar jobs can perhaps stop and nurse anywhere, or easily afford pumping supplies.
But many women in this country have jobs with low to no flexibility and maintaining a nursing relationship is difficult, if not impossible.
13
Breastfeeding is associated with prevention of Type 1 diabetes. Infants who are genetically vulnerable develop autoimmune reactions to “foreign” cow’s milk, leading to cell damage and diabetes.
The author’s intentions are good, but many other beneficial effects of breastfeeding are not considered in this brief column.
6
Exclusively breast-fed baby for 13 months, he was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes last year at 10 years. I wish we could have prevented it! No family history.
4
This is a unique testament to a very American dilemma: serve your family or serve industry. The bilateral pressures on women (and men) are massive, and unequalled elsewhere.
Economics is the study of choice, and the author chooses the data sets to foster a live rationale to frame her own decisions.
But the metanarrative is sad: parents who are poised to contribute the most to their children’s health and success are addled with guilt to accept alternatives at the expense of their children (and, ultimately, our nation and world).
1
This article is good but written from the perspective of a privileged American who can make a lot of choices, including whether to work.
2
@Dulcie Leimbach
Because she is more privileged than others does that mean her perspective isn't worth considering or that her conclusions are incorrect?
Have we come to a place in society where each person must grovel and apologize for offering an opinion when their life isn't hard enough?
4
Hmmm maybe breastfeeding would be easier for this author if she wasn’t the kind of person who felt she had to do it in a closet (or had the kind of family that made do it in a closet.) I breastfed both of my kids, and I did it anytime and anywhere the kids happened to be hungry - because babies shouldn’t hide in the closet to eat, and it was awesome: I never had to think of washing bottles etc, for one. Relax, people. Our society is messed up - change it, not yourselves. Breastfeeding IS the natural, default way of nurturing human infants, not some “incredible difficult” inscrutable skill. There are exceptions of course but how many of them are due to the fact that people are shoved into closets while doing it?
12
Thank you to the author of this much needed article! I wish I had found it nine years ago when I was struggling to breast feed my son and contemplating quitting my job to stay home with him. Women need more books and articles like this one.
5
I am so thankful to Emily for writing this article. As a young mom with an extremely colicky baby, my Dr. offered no explanation, and NO solace. My MIL suggested that I was nervous and the baby could sense it. Years later, I understand that was just my child's makeup. Same goes for the breastfeeding: I was literally so sleep deprived from feeding my first baby every 2 to 3 hours that I couldn't see straight. Yet as a child I was asthmatic and had a wide range of allergies, so I was urged to continue breastfeeding my baby to give help protect it against allergies and asthma. I did so for five months, and was so worn out and exhausted I swore I would not breastfeed my second child. As it turned out, my eldest (breastfed for five months) was asthmatic, highly allergic, and had frequent ear infections. My second child, bottle -fed, has no allergies--though did have the same incidence of ear infections. Before Dr. Spock, and "What to Expect When You're Expecting/In the First Year of Your Child's Life", parents were probably a little less stressed and dependent on "experts". Looking back I wish I had that perspective!
6
I have asthma; my first had asthma and my second didn’t. Breastfed both for about 18 months. I don’t think you can conclude either that the first got it because you were a wreck or that the second didn’t because they were bottlefed.
Well said and written. This helps. I’m a new parent and this really speaks to us as we navigate the neuroses and overwhelming flood of information available at the touch of our thumbs.
1
My advice to any mother or father is to relax. You cannot second guess or plan for every eventuality.
Re: breast feeding, do not be pressured into it. There is a movement to guilt every mother into doing this. It will not change the bonding experience, despite what nurses, Doctors and other people lead you to believe. Breast feeding was what had to happen when there was no other way to feed your child.
Regarding sleep training, most times parents are trained by the infant, not the other way around. It comes down to making sure your baby is not in distress, not wet or hungry. Use your common sense.
One thing I learned about parenthood is that you can pass on your fears to your baby. If the parents are calm the baby will feel that. If the parents are anxious, the baby will feel that to.
No one can know ahead of time whether or not they are going to enjoy parent hood until they actually have the baby. It is a whole different experience than one would imagine. It is the only lifetime job you will have Even though children grow up to be independent adults.
Lastly, this is what all of us need, including our children. Kindness and love. Structure in our lives, it is how you achieve balance.
Gentle guidance and consistency. If you give this to your children, they should grow up to be functioning adults. But nothing is guaranteed.
These have been my observations and experience being one of eight children, mother of four, grandmother of 8 and great grandmother of 2
11
The article is totally biased: I was 27 when I gave birth -- stayed home for 2 years and breastfed for 16 months. I enjoyed every moment of it (except for the first few days as I was learning) and the benefits, which this article, unfortunately, almost demonizes. Also never interfered with my career, which took fully off once my child reached 7 and I ended eventually up @ the top. We moved when the baby was 5 months old, 1,200 plus miles of driving, never had to warm up a bottle, go in the back seat and feed. I was my skinny self within months. Plus BF is cheap, only requires an extra peanut sandwich or so for the mother. My child hardly ever cried, also fosters a very close relationship. Breastfeeding in a closet that is insane, I attended a wedding when my baby was 2 weeks old, no one minded when I breastfed... it is the most natural way of feeding in the world. ever been to an African city or village ?? Also, my son has the most beautiful and healthy teeth at age 43, never had a cavity, I blame it on BF, even if this is a very anecdotal and biased observation. My personal five cents in defense of BF.
5
what a sad world where percentages are proxy for simple mental health work.
what do all of these examples have in common? raising a child is one of the only experiences in modern American society where people confront hard questions about guilt, mortality, responsibility and worth.
everything in here is supportive therapy for underfunded bankrupt self building. let's hear the suggestions in this column, but more importantly, let's actually try getting our lives together before we breed.
1
For all of you with strong opinions about breastfeeding: pediatricians, nurses, lactation consultants, la leche league, etc, my challenge to you is this. I want you to acknowledge that some children can't be breast fed, and that those children will lead healthy lives.
We adopted our son the day he was born, he had nothing but formula and has done just fine. Our friend breast fed her first 2 children, had a horrible case of mastitis with her third and couldn't breast feed.
The fact is is that some kids won't get breastfed and that's more than ok. The shame that mother's get for breastfeeding in public is equal to the shame that mother's get for not breastfeeding at all. Anyone that posts or reads boards on motherhood knows this is true.
So please reply to this message and acknowledge the following: that some mothers can't, or choose not to breast feed, their children will grow up fine, and these mothers need just as much support as those mothers who choose to breast feed
19
I think economists are likely to over-state the degree to which they understand data. They do not, as a profession, have a good grasp on how to evaluate scientific evidence in my view.
The author is correct about many of the insights in this article but let’s dispense with the notion that her economics training has anything to do with her ability to see through some obviously false statements. She is clearly a very intelligent person (even though she is an economist), why not leave it at that?
3
@Eyal Shemesh "...in your view."! How do you know? - what data/research have you looked at, or evaluated, before coming to this conclusion? Economics degrees require statistics course-work, as do science degrees.
1
Only humans are bold enough to second guess the Supreme Intelligence that created animals and designed the system for feeding baby animals. "No, wait, I have a better idea! Baby formula!!"
That being said, I have an adopted son who never breast fed, and he's fine. It seems the Supreme Intelligence put some flexibility in there.
5
Medical advice based on crunching analytic factors has produced some of the most devastating debacles and tragedies. Not to long ago, physicians in New York, Michigan at the most prestigious of medical schools instituted a program of radiating the thymus glands of thousands of babies thinking that it would promote respiratory health. What it promoted was an inordinately high thyroid cancer rate as the child grew. Similarly, thousands of babies had their tonsils radiated because it was "in vogue" for tonsillitis leading to head and neck cancers. These are catastrophes of the highest order based on stubborn attachment by clinicians to an incomplete view of evidenced based research at the time. This article highlights that healthy skepticism for contemporary health fads, intuitive insight into one's own child, pragmatism, and staying highly informed will ultimately make for the best parenting.
4
For me this was the most compelling line of thought in the entire article. It’s very relatable - that after the forth hour with your children you’d rather do your research - since I think most people in the west are more comfortable living in their own mind, rather than a more communal, experiential life. Picture any traditional scene. My personal strategy for reducing my urge to flee is to better engage my children, make them part of activities I also find stimulating, and breathing helps. My hope is they will learn to enjoy doing things with, and just being with others, because I expect that will provide them the most enjoyable life. I’m doubtful an economist can prove otherwise, not that I don’t appreciate your clever work and hypotheses.
3
@Marginal Value Says It All You also at least admit to an urge to flee, which is what she did. So nothing wrong with her urge. Children are not endlessly fascinating to everyone.
1
I don't have kids, but I've been involved in the raising of many of them. The best advice I know is: listen to everyone, but follow only the advice that seems sensible and works in your life. There are as many good ways to raise children as there are leaves on a tree.
8
I really appreciate this article. I think women are guilted into giving up their lives for their kids. If they want to do so out of choice that is fine, but it is WRONG to tell them that their children will suffer if they do not.
6
The sad substrate to that binary is sadder in the converse: your children are not your life.
Where else in the world is such a dissected and unholistic worldview encouraged?
When I was a little kid in the 80's, my mother told me several times about how she worked for the Harvard School of Public Health in the 60's. She accurately predicted all of the nutrition recommendations from that time eventually being debunked, and she told me that they were deliberately fraudulent and that Harvard had gotten money from the food industry -- high carbohydrate grain's companies like General Mills -- and falsified data in return.
Even more interesting, and what bothered her the most, was she told me something about knowing about studies done on early childhood which suggested it is terrible for mothers to put young children into daycare, and that their brains are plastic and will not develop normally, and that this research was all covered up so that corporations could force mothers with small children to work and there would be no outcry or political resistance to that.
Isn't it funny how mothers feel guilty when forced to spend too much time away. You can trust Harvard to tell you that you are wrong. They know better and they are right.
Like many others, I think I know what's best for other people's newborns. This is absurd, of course. It's like believing everyone should live on the west side of town, because where I live the west side is the place to be. But even knowing that, I'm going to roll my eyes (behind my sunglasses) when someone tells me they sleep train. Because I tried once, and it was ugly, and now--though it cost me a thousand hours of sleep over five years--now I know better.
1
@Jake Seems like it didn't work for you. I hope you didn't feel guilty about that for the last 5 years - and that those who did try it - and it worked - also didn't feel guilty; I think that is the point of the article.
I've only read the comment just below this and not the thread, but I find this article to be guilty of cherry picking the data that is used. On breastfeeding there is so much evidence for the health benefits to children that this broad brush stroke reflects the author's bias for having difficulties nursing her children. Focus on the negative. Read Amy Brown's (PhD) book called Breastfeeeding Uncovered, which has 23 pages of references. On baby training, the author ignores the stress response caused to babies who are left to cry, the hyperarousal and dissociation that comes with it for so many babies. This creates a set point for stress in children. I have just published a book called Life After Birth: A Parent's Holistic Guide for Thriving in the Fourth Trimester (Praeclarus Press), and it covers all three areas including going back to work, but from a very different perspective. Selective use of data doesn't help the greater population of new parents.
10
I was worried once that one of my kids had meningitis or some other equally, possibly deadly, disease and mentioned to the pediatrician that I didn’t want to ignore it and have my kid be the one on the news for dying from it. He responded that it’s really quite rare and “that’s why it was on the news.” In other words, try to keep some perspective.
3
One of the greatest effects of breast feeding relates to the intense bonding of mother and child that breast feeding facilitates. Perhaps studies have not been done exploring this but I, for one, would breast feed for at least a year.
2
@Suzanne Wheat You should do so, then; but the author states that many of those things we believe are beneficial (or harmful) in one way or another is not born out by studies (that she sites) and therefor no one need to feel ashamed for deviating from popular belief.
I don’t need science to tell me that breastfeeding in a 100-degree closet -- an anecdote the author felt compelled to share with readers twice -- is an unpleasant experience. Doing anything in a 100-degree closet would be highly unpleasant, which renders the anecdote baseless as an argument against breastfeeding.
18
As a pediatrician and a father I find the following to be true about articles dispensing parenting advice:
a) those written by parents (inclusive of economists) are highly biased by their own childrearing experience
b) those written by non-parents are incredibly naive
The best patenting advice I’ve ever gotten is never be without both children’s and adult ibuprofen.
402
@Neil R Except my infant has kidney cysts, so we use children's Tylenol :)
8
@Neil R
Why would you say "ibuprofen?"
I'm allergic to it - so might my child!
2
The doctor’s point surely is to keep a simple solution at hand and for parents not to forego self-care, as well.
31
One item not mentioned is that breast feeding is one of the best times you can possibly have. Sheer bliss, body bathed in endorphins.
I think if it was held up as a very desirable experience worth CONSUMING in this consumer society, many more women would do it.
Tip. Carry the baby. Nuzzle the breast. The body does the rest. Feed on demand.
11
Great if it works that way for you. It's not necessarily that wonderful for everybody.
2
@scientella As the article, and many comments state, not for everyone, so let's not prescribe.
1
@scientella. For YOU. It doesn’t work that way for everybody at all. What about your life makes you think that all hunans have the same experiences as you?
1
Great article! I nursed my two kids, who were born 7 years apart, for a total of 7 years, yes years. And if you would have told me that beforehand I would have laughed in your face! Colic, with the first and the second hardly cried as a baby (no tantrums either). And no sleep training. Both are adults now and it all worked out. I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes but the kids seem okay anyway.
6
As an economist, an engaged father, and full-time parent after my daughter was 6, my only concern is not the writers "data" references (some are questionable, like all "data"), and I like her wise reminder to do what's best for EVERYONE -child, parents, family. Clearly, I cannot say anything about my wife's decisions on breast feeding, but I did agree to spend the larger share of our wee hours holding and carrying the baby as needed. The bulk of "data" suggests parenting means submerging our habits, egos, social and work preferences in some ways, and to ignore that fact of life is, well, the same problem economics has with the real world.
The real concern here is that economists, of all people, have made, enmasse, many of the worlds most damaging and persistent disasters, based on their theories and interpretation of "data" (think 2008, Lehman et al, the insanity that led to it).
Economist's understanding of human behaviour is likely the worst among all the social sciences, due to their training and revered but simplistic theories. The Nobel in Economics three years ago finally recognized this. As that Nobel laureate, R. Thaler, pointed out cheekily: Economic theory would suggest the best possible gift- the most optimal-for a spousal birthday or anniversay is... cash".
But even if your spouse is an economist, he wouldn't advise it!
8
Oh, the best is yet to come! A phrase myself and many of my friends with adult children use is, "Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems." Don't sweat it, moms of littles.
14
@Laura So true. So many of the issues I and my fellow new mommies agonized over pale in comparison to the issues we are facing now. My son was breastfed; some of his friends were bottle-fed. It doesn't really seem to matter now that we are confronting issues like: someone brought marijuana to school; someone looked at porn on the Internet at a friend's house; someone is getting bullied over text message; a group of 8th graders talked loudly about sex in the school library. Oof. I get wistful thinking about the days when the fraught drama was between moms and not between kids. What really seems to matter is that the kids who have involved parents who are physically and emotionally present in their kids' lives are the ones reporting on the drama rather than participating in it. That's the difference I see. The kids whose parents checked out once the kids stopped being little and cute aren't doing so well. Also would like to say: now that our kids are tweens and teens, the moms who were so absolutely sure they were right about everything when their kids were babies are throwing up their hands, aghast at these new developments just like the rest of us. For those sanctimonious folks who are sure they have made all the right choices for their young children: enjoy that feeling while it lasts. It won't last long.
2
I fell asleep while driving when my daughter was 18 months old. Living in another state I consulted with Ferber by phone. My daughter was sleep trained. No crying if you do it slowly and the right way. With the consult I learned about sleeping and what we (both parents) were doing wrong. It also helped me understand the changes we needed to make in our daily routine. Within 2 months she was sleeping through the night and I could drive again!
4
I am 80. When I had my children I was ask if I was going to breast or bottle feed. I do not recall any discussions with anyone about this before, during or after. I decided. End of story. As for sleeping, you put the kid to bed, they cried, they went to sleep and if they woke up you checked to see what they needed, took care of it and everyone went back to bed. I do not recall reading a lot of books on parenting or even asking a lot of questions. Kids played outside in their yards with other children, sometimes barefoot, with no adult supervision. We kept them clean, fed, loved on them some, read to them and saw they did their homework. I was thankfully a free range kid and I believe my children are thankful they were too. Oh, and if kids are not given junk food and are allowed to run around outside and play you will find they are not overweight. Period.
31
All of us, including every commenter, got here through a million (or whatever) years of evolution and natural selection. "Normal" is a range, not a bumpersticker. Those parents, especially mothers, whose child-rearing actions fell far outside the range, essentially did not end up with children who survived to pass on genetically based proclivities.
Studies can be useful, especially as humans create and move among many environments. Anecdotal "evidence" is not evidence, ubiquitous internet clickbait notwithstanding, but can be useful to indicate directions for legitimate research. We also live in a world of rapidly increasing interacting cultures, where parental rights, communal responsibility, and a dozen other things are viewed differently.
As well, though peer pressure tends to be a lousy way to make any decision, it is real, and its effect on behavior is real. That cannot be discounted.
Bottom line for me: a little humility, less self-righteous certainty, and the self-discipline to understand that opinion and evidence as well as correlation and causation are fundamentally different entities.
6
"This makes it very difficult to establish the causal effect of breast-feeding — whether, for an individual woman, nursing her baby will make the child better off."
Why not do two studies - one that examines families who don't have money and resources one looking at families that do. See if breast-feeding has an impact withing those two groups.
Also, it would be interesting to know if breastfeeding developed a closer connection to the mother and/or a feeling of safety/ security for the infant. If it does, it would stand to reason that the child develops better focus/ ability to concentrate, as that survival instinct/stressor has been significantly reduced.
3
What parents need today is not more data but encouragement to rely on own instincts on what works best for their families and kids, paid sick leave, supportive communities and extended families and more egalitarian marriages.
9
This was probably the best article I've ever read on parenting. Emily Oster, you've spoken to me on a level I can't describe! Thank you so much!
3
Those of you shaming the author for breastfeeding in a closet - you are either living in a fantasy breastfeeding utopia unfamiliar to the rest of us, or you've never had to breastfeed a baby. Stop saying its ridiculous - stop shaming mom. Do you think she's in there by choice? Start shaming the people who made her - and the rest of us who have our own countless breastfeeding-in-a-closet stories - feel like that is the only option.
221
@jrck
I've breastfed in restaurants on occasion, in quiet corners of where ever I happened to be, in parks, often in the car parked at whatever location I was visiting. Never a bathroom, they're not clean. It is possible and usually desirable to find a quiet spot where the baby isn't distracted by the activity around them, which makes the feeding and diaper change tandem easier. I sought out a discrete place to nurse mostly because it is conducive to a good feeding for the child, but also because it is something that, even though it is a normal biological thing, also felt very intimate and something I just didn't want to share with the rest of the world. Of course, I can't separate out whether some element of public discomfort informed my feelings in a way I am not aware, but I think mostly not because I always felt pretty comfortable with the choices I was making. But I am pretty reserved naturally, though a unorthodox in many respects!
13
@Name
I spent every lunch hour for a year pumping and munching in the bathroom at work. It wasn't visibly unsanitary, and didn't seem to harm my child. My colleagues were kind about it and would use the bathroom before I went in. One would sometimes pull up a chair outside the door to talk to me. It was lonely sometimes.
11
@jrck
Shame is internal not external. Nobody forced her to nurse in a closet. I have nursed in public many times and have never felt the need to hide. I wore nursing clothes but that was it.
I suggest we all stop hiding so nursing becomes the norm.
The only way to create a breastfeeding utopia as you call it is by breastfeeding.
3
I work in healthcare and can't stress enough the value of understanding what constitutes a "significant" finding. You're helping a new generation of mothers chill out a smidge and perhaps avoid sending epigenetically bad vibes down through their remaining progeny.
9
One thing that wasn't discussed is that in USA's culture it's 'shameful' to breastfeed your child in public, because breasts are ultra sexualized. Here in Brazil, mothers just feed their babies from the breast in the bus, work, market, and that's fine. Why shouldn't it be? The breast is actually the best device to do it. Having to go to a 100 degree closet to breastfeed your baby is actually a cultural issue, not a breastfeeding issue.
Having data can help making a decision, but the true test is the test of time, and breastfeeding will always beat any other method on that. The implications of using formula/weird devices to feed children are not apparent yet, as it's too soon to tell.
IMO, fighting for cultural change is the right thing to do, instead of justifying unproven methods.
140
@Vini Great point! Women shouldn't have to feel shame or feel like they need to breastfeed in the closet. A cultural shift is needed.
5
@Vini The culture in the USA is hyper- capitalistic and hi -tech where breast feeding is mostly considered too primitive, especially in public.
5
@Vini
I am an American woman who bucked the norm and breastfed in public all the time. Occasionally I would get the hairy eyeball and disparaging remarks.
I never let it bother me.
I COULD NOT AGREE WITH YOU MORE !
7
My kids now 22, 15. Were both breast fed for6-8 months and then formula. Doubt breast feeding helped them as they have an outlier amount of epi-pen food allergies (mustard, potato, all beans and the list goes on) that started when they started eating solid foods before 1yo and they still have these food allergies to this day and 22yo continues to add more. They also have Asthma. They were sleep trained (8 hours by 8 weeks) and into daycare, part-time at 10 weeks until Kindergarten. My oldest is now married, graduated summa cum laude from college and got a job at a major tech company in Silicon Valley. My youngest plays in the youth symphony and is a straight A+ athlete student at a prep school. All this to say--do what is best for YOUR FAMILY. I think all these studies do not amount to much for your own personal decisions. According to the stats & data my kids were supposed to be ill-adjusted, poor IQ, and aggressive etc. Life is not about accomplishments or IQ. I just list the above bc frankly breastfeeding didn't help their health one bit (they were always sick when they were young & they have asthma) and daycare did not harm them. Relax, make good decisions for your baby the way your family needs to make decisions. Ignore the data it will get new moms stressed.
12
Might not be exclusively the milk that benefits breast fed babies, but rather—and possibly more influential—the contact with a nurturing mother that engenders benefits to the new born and developing baby.
6
My take away from this article is that wealth is the root of good outcomes...It begins with having enough money and time to breastfeed and ends with bribing someone $500,000 to take the SAT for your kids and to get them photoshopped pictures for a fake rowing scholarship.
16
Moms! Do not listen to the latest trends or “experts”. The best guide for caring for your infant is your own heart. Hearing your baby screaming himself unconscious feels absolutely awful. Because it is absolutely awful. “Sleep training” for young infants is sanctioned baby torture. Please follow your heart and don’t let anyone talk you into it. It is WRONG.
8
Having an accident because you’re so tired isn’t good for anyone. I finally tried Ferber because I was so exhausted - my kids never napped long, either - and it is NOT letting them scream themselves to sleep. It’s very gradual. It worked well and we were all happier.
1
yeah... on that risk reduction for cancer thing. what is the absolute (not relative) risk? teach what you preach.
2
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’ Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.” - Kurt Vonnegut
For over 100,000 years we mammals (Definition: any of a class of warm-blooded higher vertebrates that nourish their young with milk secreted by mammary glands) have nourished our young with milk secreted by our mammary glands. Why WOULDNT you breast feed your baby?
For over 100,000 years, homo sapiens have lived in close knit communities where babies slept with their mother. Why would you leave your baby alone in a dark room where a lion or tiger could eat them? Why would you NOT keep your baby close to you today? Why would you leave them alone to cry?
And perhaps most perplexing, why would you have a baby and then not want to raise that baby yourself? Why would you have a baby and then leave the baby for 8-10 hours a day with someone else?
Raising children is intuitive. Like a bird building a nest. we know what is right. Do what is right. Don't think so much!
10
The half life of "truth" in BigScience is ten seconds. Need an expert on child rearing? Ask your grandparents. Use your own critical thinking skills and analyze what of your parents parenting worked well (had positive outcomes) and what did not. Caveat. You really will actually have to be honest with yourself and think critically.
As far as the guilt goes. Guilt is almost narcissism. Rather than sit around wallowing in guilt, why not sit with that feeling of shame, mindfully to use the latest amerikan hackneyed buzzword, and allow it to soften so you can stop making it about your feelings of shame, and start making it actually about child rearing the normal way....why is it we cant seem to do normal biological things well in US? maybe we need to ask Alexa?
4
It is unconscionable the editors would allow an article with such high impact to proceed without sufficient scientific foundation for the conclusions drawn.
6
I am so sick of this author gaining such a broad platform on this subject. She is not a doctor. She is not a public health official. She is not a therapist. She has not studied child development. She has NO PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE IN THIS AREA. She is an economist. And she's not writing about the economics of parenting.
I would be much happier to read what actual professionals in this field have to say on the subject. I suspect thet would be less casual and dismissive about some of these debates.
12
@Jessica She doesn't claim to be any of those things, but is examining some issues of child-rearing through a cost-benefit analysis of behaviors-outcomes as quantified by some specific studies. Ignore her thoughts if you wish - she wont judge you (the point of her article is don't worry about the judgment of others, right?)
1
This is why God gave us instinct.
4
I may be biased as an American living in Africa who is going on 3 years of breastfeeding her child (here in public with zero judgement whatsoever), but there is virtually no mention of the decisions (or lack thereof due to the cost of formula) women make in other societies. Women in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, have an average of seven children each and breastfeed them...for example. Women all over the world have no access to formula. Where does this fit in??? The worldwide weaning age is between 2-4. Keeping the discussion focused on Western cultures is doing a disservice to the overall culture of breastfeeding. And as someone who is breastfeeding a toddler I can assure you in the US and Europe many people are horrified and extremely judgemental even though for me and my daughter it remains a wonderful thing for us at the end of each day. Bottom line: let’s just stop the momshaming and let each woman decide what they want to do. You can find a study to support anything you want.
131
@Elizabeth. Good point. In Mexico many women feed powdered Nestle "baby formula" to their babies mainly because they have to work or just that they think that it's healthy. That is not true and many articles have been written about the downsides of these fake concoctions. The wealthy in the US can pump breast milk or buy expensive, organic, wholesome formulas but the majority of women cannot.
11
@Elizabeth
I too am American and nursed my toddlers. I let judgement roll off me. I am also aware of the realities of non-western mothering.
We are in a time when a person can support anything.
I do think it is better to keep discussing what is best for baby and child.
Shame is something that is an individual’s response and if women feel shamed by hearing that breast is best that quite frankly should not be a concern. If you believe in your choice where does the shame stem from ?
That is the real question.
4
@Elizabeth; no good feeling guilty, however I would like to see a study of the health effects of breastfeeding in women whose cultures allow for that so much more easily. Just read an interesting article on why African babies don't cry:
https://www.naturalchild.org/articles/guest/claire_niala.html
3
I’m thinking if a parent has the time/resources/interest to read parenting articles in the NY Times their kids are going to be just fine.
Isn’t it nice that we have the luxury of worrying about sleeptraining, rather than food/clothing/shelter?
Stop freaking out, already.
190
As someone who has the time/resources/interest to read parenting articles in the NY Times, I resent your sarcastic comment. Try not to be so smug about the struggles of parents, and especially mothers, of young babies. What do you know about the likes of me anyway? Regarding the issues you list: As a young, qualified professional, I joined the staff of several unions at lower pay than I could have earned elsewhere and worked for several years to improve pay and working conditions for our union members, many of whom were immigrant women of colour. I regularly donate to the Women's Refuge, and encourage my friends to do the same. I vote for political parties who try to tackle these issues. I also had a baby with severe colic, who grew out of that but who then woke and cried inconsolably several times a night for the next year. Medical examinations were all clear, and the baby grew into a healthy child, and a healthy adult. But I was tipped over into postnatal depression by my endless attempts to soothe away the nightly crying. Postnatal depression is neither pleasant nor safe. It would have been life-changing to read an article like this, with its link to the Australian sleep study findings. My thanks to the author.
21
@Hmm. I enjoy reading any newspaper, something I watched my father do...he was the child of immigrants as was my mother. Their parents came from abject poverty yet were very smart folks. They did not live to see the successes of their children and grandchildren but I am am pretty sure they would not be surprised that some of them still read newspapers.
14
@Hmm.
Agree! I am 73. All I can say is it wasn’t a perfect
world but my parents did the best they could and we all
grew up!
7
Sleep training isn’t just the “cry it out method”. There are many books out there that use other techniques, such as strict scheduling, behavior modification, or combination of a few of these. I successfully used behavioral modification in “The No-Cry Sleep Method” by Elizabeth Pantley with all 4 of my children, including triplets. This technique changes one variable slowly over time and is commonly used for adults with sleep issues as well.
3
moms - i say do what works for you because you can't be a good mother if you are stressed and sleep deprived. When my son was a baby he had a lot of food intolerances. Breastfeeding him meant that my diet was extremely restricted and I had to cook everything myself to ensure the ingredients were safe for him. I only breastfed for 6 months because I was emaciated, stressed out, and hungry all the time. Looking back I wish I had quit sooner. All this pressure of breast is best is not good for mothers. My son was on formula for 6 months and he is still thriving. By the way both my brother and I grew up on formula and we are both engineers!
13
Dear new moms: I nursed my daughter until she was three years old. She's now the mom of a beautiful 10 week old baby boy. For a number of reasons, nursing didn't work out for her. Before her own experience, I never appreciated how lucky she and I were to be such a compatible nursing pair. I still think breast milk is cheaper, more convenient, and probably a little more digestible than formula. But as much as I loved nursing, I hardly think it's the only way. My mother fed me formula, and I'm a happy, healthy, well-adjusted grandmother. I don't know a single adult who walks around discussing whether they were breast-fed or formula-fed, but I do know plenty who grew up in unpleasant households with stressed out parents. The amount of pressure put on new moms to do everything a certain way leads to exhaustion and misery and accomplishes the exact opposite of what a baby needs to thrive - a calm, relaxed, loving environment with parents who have time to engage with them instead of spending hours on social media sites and blog posts, comparing notes with other moms whose experiences may be entirely irrelevant to their own situations. What about just enjoying the very short period of time you have with your infant instead of constantly stressing about whether you're doing everything the right or best way? This is just one of many phases of parenthood and it will be over before you know it. Don't waste it over trivial matters that make no difference in the long run.
28
After having my first child after practicing law for several years, it dawned on me that my baby had not “read the manual.” I was so sure I could find the answer to every question in a book, like I always had, and it was a revelation that I was stuck just doing the best I could through trial and error.
7
What you are calling "science" is basically epidemiology, most of which cannot be characterized as science. Most of it is simply misinterpretation of confounder variables to suit the needs of the "researcher" to perhaps good coverage, more funding, publishing opportunities, etc. Their exists a demonstrable bias toward 'positive' results because well, negative results don't earn tenure etc. A good example is breast feeding. Nearly all the claims of breast feeding being advantageous are without any foundation. Worse many of the reports may actually hedge their claims since in virtually all cases no causality can be established, but the press coverage omits any qualifying. Since breast feeding is exclusively the domain of middle class women in the US, there is no way to factor for that. All of the claimed health advantages can simply be ascribed to the advantages of social class. Breast-fed babies have lower obesity, diabetes, intestinal infections, cancer, higher IQ, bla, bla, bla, because richer people have all those things. The campaign for breast feeding is political not scientific. It is akin to claiming there is a link between flossing and heart disease. I could prove tomorrow that people who floss have fewer heart attacks. However, it has nothing to do with flossing. People who floss also tend to have the discipline to eat better, and take care of their health, etc. Next.
6
Yes, someone else was trying to sleep in that hotel while you were walking up and down the hallway with your screaming child. The hallway is not the place to try and soothe a crying child. I have had this experience so many times and I just call hotel security. I feel for you and your kid, but I need my sleep too. The hotel can find you an empty meeting room where you can dim the lights, walk in circles, and not disturb those around you.
11
I gave birth to my daughter on Tuesday. My breasts hurt and my nipples are already bruised, bloody, and scabbed over. I promised my husband I wouldn't torture myself over breastfeeding this time, the way I did with my son.
With my son, I joined online support groups telling me I just had to push through the pain because the benefits are "so so worth it." I would openly sob feeding him because it hurt so much. I developed a rash on my nipples that spread up to my face due to stress. Three doctors - my obgyn, a dermatologist, and an allergy specialist couldn't figure it out, and nothing they prescribed worked. Worst of all, I would dread hearing him wake up because I would spiral into a deep depression when I realized I had to nurse him.
This won't keep people from judging my choices or the guilt I feel having made them but this is good to know for my own sake.
24
It is horrifying how the pressure on women to breast feed has become totally weaponized, even when there are clear medical indicators that it is not feasible for the mother or healthy for the baby. It's simply awful how women are terrorized by other women over this pseudo-feminist top-gun motherhood competition of one-uping. My daughter would have died if we had not switched to a hypoallergenic formula, which within 2 hours stopped her chronic diarrhea and she thrived. Women would not stop tut-tuting and saying how "sorry" they were that my wife couldn't breast feed. I highly suggest a wonderful book called "Is Breast Best?: Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts..." by Joan Wolf. It debunks much if the pseudo-science and politics of the breast feeding issue.
15
I nursed my daughter for two years. It’s NOT supposed to hurt. If it’s still hurting I would stop. Don’t give it another thought and don’t beat yourself up about it.
In any case the possible benefits of nursing are statistical only, and marginal. The two years of nursing didn’t stop my daughter from getting Type 1 Diabetes at age 11. Nursing is not some magical guaranteed path to child health perfection that it is sometimes made out to be.
9
This article completely avoids the conversation of circumcision, a decision almost 50% of the population will make within the first year. Missed opportunity...
5
The American (or perhaps North American) population, you mean. It's really not that common a practice in many other countries, apart from amongst certain specific religious and/or cultural communities.
3
I have to wonder why the writer felt she had to breastfeed her baby in a closet. I just breastfed my babies out in the open. Also, the local hospital had a free breastfeeding group that met once a week so you could meet other breastfeeding moms and get help.
9
Great article. As a parent of two and grandpa of two, she hits on key areas that concern us all. It’s amazing how often urban legend and group think just doesn’t stand up to the data. Too bad the economists weren’t around for the defense at the Salem Witch Trials.
4
In reading through other comments, I wonder, as I have done frequently, why the topic of breast-feeding provokes so many on every side. I think the author is saying two things: (i) look more carefully at the data, it may not support the claims of causality that many infer from it, only correlations and (ii) feel less guilty about the choices you make as a parent, in spite of the unsolicited advice you are bombarded with. Whether or not I agree with her specific statements about breast-feeding or sleep-training, I think these points are well-taken - children seem to be be quite resilient if the overall circumstances of their upbringing are good.
Coming back to breast-feeding, it is free and more hygienic for the poor in developing countries who may not have access to clean water and expensive formula. It isn't free if you have to pump (as most working mothers have to do). So once again, it is a matter of perspective.
15
I'm probably in the minority here but I find this article irresponsible. I'm a mother of two, and very much a data-driven engineer. What we know about humans, brain, emotions, long term holistic health... is very little compared to what we do NOT know. Hence the metrics we measure are not complete.
.
Besides something else bothers me. Is it just about IQ & measurable success/harm? What about the babies' & kids' emotions? Do their feelings not matter? In Europe a whole generation grew up brought up (and often mistreated) by nannies and then in boarding schools. It was a norm. I'm sure they would claim that they "turned out just fine". But read between the lines in the books written in that era. Several of them are so dark about childhood. Again & again I'm struck by this.
Parenthood is not easy. By all means DO NOT have kids if you dont want to. Really - no one should feel the least pressure to. But if we bring a little defenceless human being in the world we owe to them to make the hard choices for their sake. Breastfeeding leads to contentment in babies, so does being held by and sleeping near parents. I know it can be inconvenient but it the truth.
25
Looking back, I was a very intense mom when my 3 kids were small, and I feel like I’m just now coming out of a dark cave of exhaustion! I breastfed each of them for 4 years while working full-time. I did not let them cry it out, not because I was militant in some way, but because I couldn’t. I preferred to hold my kids as they fell asleep, and that definitely had an effect on my health. My husband was an able co-parent and I am thankful he was understanding of my style and supportive. I was very sleep-deprived for over a decade. Now that my youngest is 6, I am fiercely protective of my sleep!
8
What a wonderful and refreshing article. It's so rare to hear properly reasoned views on parenthood. It has become so ideologically fraught and just plain silly — people one-upping each other on who is the biggest martyr, with all the co-sleeping, endless breastfeeding, baby-wearing and other extremes backed by pseudo-science that encourages people to fetishize their kids, cater to their whims, and let them dominate and dictate adults' lives.
As if people hadn't been raising kids since time immemorial without, gasps, piles of books. Thank you, Prof. Oster.
13
As someone who breastfed her babies before data became a "thing," I get that data could be helpful in assuaging mothers' guilt.
I'm not seeing any mention by the author or commenters about the closeness and sense of security a baby feels as a result of his or her mother being willing to share her body with them -- however inconvenient it is -- however long she can.
As @Pam said, parenthood is a volunteer situation.
15
@Skadi A recent study has confirmed what adoptive parents have always known, breastfeeding has NO positive effective on bonding (it actually was found to have some negative effect): https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-019-2264-0
5
Sharing my body for nine months doesn't count?
8
I bottle fed both my kids. I cuddled and rocked both of them during their feedings. I seriously doubt that they felt somehow deprived because they weren't at my breast.
18
I love the insight that highly educated and successful women too often try to apply the study/work habits that have served them so well to childrearing.
I certainly did and was quite surprised and alarmed to find that my diligence did not pay off the way I expected. Over time, I learned to relax. I now have two happy and well adjusted teenagers. I am also happy and well adjusted.
11
Less stressed out, nourished and connected families are the #1 requirement for healthy kids. However we get there is fine by me.
16
Babies respond to stimuli of all kinds. I love had a beautiful thoroughbred mare who was a nice responsive horse. When a friend tried to ride her the horse always got upset. The friend was a very good ride, but she could not get along with the horse. It turned out that my friend was going through a nasty divorce ad was very upset over this situation. The horse noticed her tension right away, and got tense herself. Babies may be a lot like that. They feel tensions, but do not understand them, so they respond to tension with tension of their own.
3
I too went through a Similar experience. Breast-feeding was difficult to manage, however in time, it became very easy and convenient. I would never go in the closet to breastfeed, much to the horror of my parents. I also shared the bed, did not allow my child to cry it out, and I never spanked. I looked at statistics too, but felt my own instincts were the most important.This too became an argument with my parents, I was perceived as a bad parent spoiling a child. I took nine months off from work. My child is an adult now, a normal, happy, functioning, healthy adult.
10
I was born in 1951. My mother told me that she kept me on the first floor in a bassinet. I have two older siblings, ages six and eight at the tinme, and they were very active. My mom said that every day I would cry between five and eight o'clock in the evening, and she would just hold me on one shoulder while she cooked dinner. She attributed my crying to stress from the activity of my older siblings; she certainly did not blame herself. Of course, by that time, she had had some experience; new mothers are usually worry more (I know that I did).
4
As so many commenters point out, this column raises all sorts of issues that are hardly tangential to Oster's main thesis. With respect to working outside the home, aside from the question about what's best for children, I always want to ask another one: If it's not parents' – or, in some cultures, more senior family members' job – to care for their children, whose job is it? I consider the question central to personal rationales for child-bearing. And I make no gender assumptions. I know couples with full-time work who set up their schedules so that one or the other of them was home with the kids most hours most days, and I know other families where Dad was chief cook and bottle washer while Mom brought home the bacon. And regarding families who can't afford to make such equitable arrangements, what are the ethics of giving adolescents with the brunt of responsibility of caring for younger siblings?
1
I don't really understand why breastfeeding is supposed to be hard. Sure, there are women who have issues with the quantity of milk, who work long hours, etc. But for stay-at-home moms this seems to me the easiest way of feeding the baby. No formula to buy, no bottles to carry around and wash, the food is always there. Yes, my son was extremely wiggly and I spent a week or two in the beginning trying to find the best position and approach, but once this was done, I enjoyed breastfeeding tremendously, even in places like a supermarket restroom.
5
@Julia
Every child and every mother is different.
For me, it was easy too - on my first. On my second - it was almost impossible. Although easy - not exactly the word for it. No chance of a full night's sleep - you are always the person to get up when baby is hungry. For 12 months, you are chained to the baby - no weekend getaway. If baby has a food sensitivity, your diet must change.
Believing your experience is the same as everyone else's is the problem. It'll work for some people and not for others. And that is fine. Why they choose one thing and not the other - that's their private business.
19
@Julia For me, it wasn’t physically hard, it was emotionally hard. I felt trapped by the clock - anytime I went out without my baby, I felt like I was anxious about running back to feed her. Stay at home mom or not, I think it is very fair for women to say, I did the work for 9 months, I’m done being the sole source of food.
7
@Julia My baby didn’t consistently latch for the first 3.5 months. I tried everything. I saw many lactation consultants, nurses, and doctors. I turned to friends and family who had breastfed for whatever advice and guidance they would give me. Nothing helped. I pumped constantly and fed her bottles and kept offering my breast, though it almost never led to her latching and eating from it. I’m Canadian so I had parental leave from work and I was truly devoting every day and night to trying to make it work. Finally at 3.5 months she started latching but only while in the side lying position (both of us lying down). An osteopathy treatment may have led to her latching or it may have just been coincidental that it happened soon after seeing the osteopath. Who knows. Only at 6 months did she started breastfeeding in other positions. I believe this is a fair example of breastfeeding being hard. Many women have this type of experience or much worse with breastfeeding. It’s not always straightforward. And many, many women do not have the privileges that I did—time away from working, socialized healthcare, money to see specialists, education, access to authoritative information, etc.—and it’s these privileges that ultimately allowed me to eventually establish breastfeeding with my child. So yes, breastfeeding can be hard.
9
BUT ... what happens to the life expectancy of moms who work outside the home while their children are small? I personally suspect I wouldn't have gotten cancer so early if I hadn't allowed myself to be sleep deprived for so many years.
5
In keeping with the article, what does the data show? Does getting cancer correlate with getting less sleep?
3
I wish they would stratify babies in these studies, by their moon signs. That correlates well (according to astrology community), with how we handle stress and suffering.
2
I am so glad that my husband and I chose never to have children.
9
Ha! :) My Husband and I were on the same path, then, decided to have children in our early 30s after having been together for 15 years. My Son is two. I can tell you, I was wrong about a lot of things as an outsider looking in. After having my son, I actually regret not starting our family sooner, but, given the schooling for my Ph.D, it wasn’t doable. Regardless, this experience is a true adventure. I feel like my life started over in a way. It is hard to explain but everything is 1000x more fulfilling. :)
11
Yes, it's hard work but crucial nevertheless for the ongoing viability of any society, which is why there should be lots of support for the people undertaking this demanding role.
3
I can’t imagine why you would breastfeed a baby in a closet.
5
How many commenters have actually tasted formula? I tested a few back in the day, some powdered, some pre-constituted liquids and expensive by the can. To the one they were very unappealing and one was downright disgusting. My memory of that one was that it truly was one of the worst things I'd ever tasted. It certainly did not taste like food should... wholesome and nourishing. I was shocked at how bad it was. Sure maybe a hungry baby will eat it but if you had tasted the ones I tried you would have been reluctant to feed it to your dog. Maybe formula tastes better now, but who knows? I'm no longer in the market to beta test. Successfully breast fed all my kids. Pumped some, subbed with formula occasionally just so someone else could feed baby while I did other things or if I was taking medication. It was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I've ever done. Everyone's experience is going to be different. Do what works for you. If you get the majority of the aspects of parenting right, it will probably be fine in the long run.
4
Breast milk tastes gross too.
@Amy
No, it does not.
1
Anecdotal: Our son was breastfed until 3 1/2 years, was never left to cry, shared a family bed until he asked to have his own room, and is physically and emotionally very strong, starting Harvard Law School this fall.
12
@Parent: Equally anecdotal, my son was bottle fed and sleep-trained. I returned to full time work when he was six months old. He was the most wonderful child and teen and received his high school’s top academic award. He graduated from university with a double major, attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in NYC, graduating with honours, and is now the Director of Neurosurgery at a public NYC hospital. Oh, and did I forget? He received the “Top 40 under 40” award for outstanding success in his field before he reached 40. I don’t think either you or I can make a definitive comment on the success of our parenting styles on our children’s later successes in life, do you?
9
Would that more parents did the sort of in depth research the author has on the science of vaccination instead of just going to the first websites that turn up on Google, all of which are anti-vax, scaremongering and decidedly unscientific. Measles is the most contagious virus there is, is untreatable and can kill in a few days. Infants do not receive their first vaccination until 12 to 15 months of age and so are highly vulnerable. Also very vulnerable are those who are immunologically comprised by cancer chemotherapy, anti-rejection drugs or an immunodeficiency condition. It is absolutely untrue that measles (or any other vaccination) causes autism or for that matter any other illness other than mild and transient side effects like injection site reactions, benign fevers, vomiting or diarrhea with rare cases of causing a mild case of measles or allergic reactions to residual egg protein.
6
infants recieve vaccinations at the hospital when they are born before going home...
Wonderful article, thank you! I am a pediatrician and I am constantly advising parents to worry less. Easy to suggest, harder to do. My grey hair and long experience helps me be convincing. I like to harp on what I think is really important, love and affection. Our kids need our love, our attention, and then they need our example. The camera is always rolling during parenthood, we need to behave the way we want our kids to become. That gives them the shot they deserve to self-actualize. Will it work? Depends on the kid.
4
Although I appreciate Dr. Oster’s attempt to dig into the data on popular parenting beliefs to help reduce guilt over the big parenting decisions, the author misses a central and I think most powerful data piece on breastfeeding- the unique and far-reaching emotional connection between mother and child.
I admit to a pro breastfeeding bias from being a birth and postpartum doula. But I think this is balanced by being a mom who breast-fed my first but could not with second my child who was adopted at 11 months. I experienced some significant physical challenges while breastfeeding but was ultimately successful because I had unstinting support from family, medical and community members. I liked that I was giving us both possible physical benefits but the experience and memories were and are the most precious part. It was distressing to me that I couldn’t experience this with my second child but it did not riddle me with guilt, as I know that I gave my best to each child according to each circumstance. Some of the best things in life cannot be reflected in quantitative data but must be analyzed with qualitative information from the heart.
5
@Elizabeth this has been analyzed with quantitative information and it has been found that breastfeeding has no effect on bonding: https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-019-2264-0
3
@spz Thank you for the link. I was only referring to my perceived bond to the infant. As the study states under "Several limitations of this study should be mentioned."
"Finally, mother-infant bonding is a complex set of emotions and cognitions, and the instrument used in this study to assess bonding was originally designed for detecting bonding disorders, future studies may prefer instruments that focus on positive aspects of the maternal emotions towards her infant." Interestingly, this exactly supports my anecdotal reporting of my experience in breast-feeding. I also take exception to the declarative nature of the title: "Mother-infant bonding is not associated with feeding type: a community study sample". While this study adds to the literature that may help us eventually understand breastfeeding and bonding, it does not prove or disprove a link.
1
Boy do I ever wish this article had been written in 2003!
2
Stop hiding in hot closets to breastfeed. It can be done in well ventilated areas without scaring your fellow wedding attendees. It’s not shameful, dirty, scary or shocking.
15
People who crunch and interpret data have an agenda - their, not your, agenda. People wth common sense have common sense.
8
Excellent article !
1
Thank you. Thank you, thank you thank you.
Why on Earth were you nursing in a closet?! That's ridiculous. You were uncomfortable, your baby was uncomfortable; nurse somewhere comfortable, even if there are other people around.
11
Kudos to all the parents doing their best for their kids. I breast fed both of my kids. Most interesting place I nursed my daughter was at the Museum of Natural History
2
Why were you in a hot closet breastfeeding? Can we unpack that a bit?
12
I once needed to breastfeed while attending a wedding. Since I was in formal wear (a strapless gown with boning in the bodice), I had to disrobe my upper half to free my breast, which I would have never been comfortable to do in sight of other guests. It’s certainly understandable why she may have wanted some privacy and that space may have been one of the only / best options.
7
Perhaps she was wearing a dress.
Sleep training! A battle of wills with a month-old baby. Oh, we tried it for a few days. By then we were both wrecked with guilt and sleep deprivation. It was physically painful.
Maybe the kid just doesn't want to sleep right now, or maybe, just maybe, a rat is eating her toes. That's the sort of thing that would go through my mind. And when I went in and got her and she stopped crying and buried her nose in my shoulder, I would almost sob with relief.
I have no idea whether it's a good idea or not. But if you can listen to your own baby crying for 15 minutes and do nothing about it, you're on a very strange power trip and maybe you should think hard about whether to have any more kids.
And both of my kids are grown and are apparently happy and healthy, even though they won every battle in the sleep wars.
14
Ken Very small babies need a lot of contact. Sleep training seems very much like a kind of late capitalist thing.
Thanks, Emily! I loved your earlier article about pregnancy but this article is even more reassuring as I get ready for my 2nd child.
I grew up poor and was formula-fed. For my 1st child, I believed that breast milk was magical because everyone in my affluent, overly-educated circle had the leisure to try it. I felt insecure (even though I have a masters from Harvard) and wanted to make sure my child had every advantage.
So I tried breastfeeding for 8 weeks and it was hell. I felt guilty for not ever doing it full time for six months. It caused a lot of psychological issues for me even though my husband (who studied at Harvard how industry food lobbyists affected government nutritional guidelines) kept saying from week 1, “Let’s use formula so you can sleep and I can bond with baby through bottle feeding!” I basically had an expert in my own household who was telling me how activists twist or exaggerate science to promote certain recommendations, and I didn’t believe him that formula was a perfectly legitimate way to feed a baby. Instead, I believed the dumb hospital pamphlet that said breastmilk would raise the IQ of a child and prevent cancer in a child.
With the 2nd child, I don’t know I would attempt breastfeeding. My 1st was mostly formula-fed baby. She has beautiful clear skin, is always on target with her growth curves, is never sick, & is extremely bright. The magic spell is broken for me. Breastfeeding seems to make no difference; doesn’t seem worth the effort.
7
Ms Oster, as an econ professor you not an expert in breastfeeding or human milk. You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, as is each of us. But it is just that - your opinion. The fact that you are also a university professor clouds that issue a bit, but I hope readers remember this is an opinion piece. You do cite articles, but cherry pick some older and less robust ones. Some of the strongest, evidence-based breastfeeding recommendations can be found at The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine:
https://www.bfmed.org/
Moms have tough feeding experiences because "they don't know what they don't know". And that includes not knowing who to ask for the best guidance. Even most health care providers have little to no education (or continuing education) on infant feeding either. Often what information they do have came from formula companies. I don't believe it's wise to base baby feeding decisions on advice from an expert in economics...
Again, the above reflects your opinions with some articles referenced to support your opinions.
Moms do the best they can with the support and knowledge they have, at that time. Board certified lactation consultants have this expertise through education and training. If this is a passion of yours (or others reading this), know that having a health background is not required to earn this credential and that this diversity is beneficial to our profession. https://iblce.org/ #IBCLC
10
@Anne Cassens
The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine is not a neutral source of advice. They rely on many small insignificant studies in their own journals and tend to ignore the larger body of scientific literature that has shown doubling of newborn readmissions from exclusive breastfeeding, benefits of pacifiers from birth, and the importance of safe sleep for mom as well as baby.
7
@Anne Cassen
Although her field is economics, the fact that Dr. Oster knows how to read and evaluate published research, and discern credible studies from those whose findings should not be as compelling, is incredibly helpful.
When we rely on mommy blogs and non-informed sources who are swayed by the findings of a published study that has a lot of flaws (like non-randomized samples or small sample sizes), then moms are misinformed!
I highly recommend you read her book “Expecting Better”, where she explains this in more detail. She doesn’t preach about what is right or wrong, but states a summary of the data, pros and cons, and evaluate the level of risk of different choices. The book is an amazing guide for pregnancy decisions, as this article is a helpful source for some of the toughest post-birth decisions.
6
I am so glad I started having kids before the mommy wars and before the Internet. I raised them on Dr. Spock, that was it. By the time I had my fifth, and last, it was 1998 and the pressure was in full swing. I felt it, even though I had obviously had children many times before. There is always someone to tell you that you are doing it “wrong”. For the record, my bottle fed baby has been the healthiest of all of them. The four who were nursed all ended up with ear tubes, tonsillectomies, colds, and one had eczema. They are all highly intelligent and scored high on preschool gifted and talented magnet school tests (another joke, I would love to see someone go into causality there). When I had my first I did everything right during pregnancy. I had a birthing plan, a “focal point” I brought to the hospital (lol), and nursing bras, nursing pads, and Lamaze classes. I left there with a c section scar, a ten pound baby and as much formula as they would give me. I was 20 years old. Thankfully Dr. Spock recommended sleep training in his book and I never had to go through what I’ve seen people go through- sleeping on the floor outside of their four year old’s room as they reassure them that everything is ok. I mean... come on.
6
This male's perspectives are: lactation is the Creator's plan for mammals; mother's milk is largely preferable to alternatives; infants are "learning" before they are "born"; are born with mouths "wired" for learning, via breastfeeding; procedural memory preceeds representational memory (Piaget) and the nursing process can teach the infant about the need to cooperate, and not be selfish, in order to cope with hunger, and suffering. In the end, here on Good Friday, we can all know "Love wins" (C Underwood). for more Piaget .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4VSRg4e8w
5
So grateful for this article, 2 days before we're supposed to start sleep-training my up-4-to-8-times-a-night six-month old....
2
This article is awesome! As a full-time working mom who breastfeeds and gives formula (when my milk randomly dips), I completely agree that people should do whatever works best for them. I just wish that formula didn't have so much crap in it. Every time I read the ingredient list, I get to the third or fourth ingredient and have to stop reading because it starts to make me feel awful for giving it.
Any suggestions would be welcomed! :)
4
@Janelle
Try Holle brand. You can find on organicstart.com.
I was breastfeeding - no cover, in a gift store in the California Redwoods. I was a little nervous of running into some prudish nut. An older man walking around looks past me, then looks back, then walks over - not looking directly at my nursing baby.
He comments how wonderful it is to see a mother caring for her baby, and walks on.
I think often people in general worry too much about a possible judgmental person, when in reality, most people know how hard parenting can be, and the occasional obnoxious pig or prudish santimommy are people that we all need to give far less headspace. Who cares if someone who is a crappy person doesn't like what you are doing? Care about the nice people, the reasonable ones.
7
I am a first time mother (and scientist). I am fine with parents doing what they believe is best and believe most do anyway. I also encourage parents to understand the facts in making informed decisions about their children. It seems to me that parents want to hear that what they are doing is “okay” despite the facts. Yes, if you can’t breastfed or decided not to, for example, fine. It happens, but, don’t try to tell me (and other moms) formula is better than breast milk. It isn’t. The research-the facts, show it isn’t (see article links). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3508512/#!po=62.1429 and https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108105942.htm
I ended up pumping for almost a year (and even then I felt guilty). My point is though, I didn’t look to anyone to tell me it was “okay” and I didn’t read articles that specifically pandered to my ego and sense of worth. Sometimes we do things that are less than ideal for our children, learn to live with it but don’t try to make fiction into fact or change facts.
156
@Rachel Alexandria
Chasing an ideal IS less than ideal. The difference in all research between formula and breastfeeding is so small that if breastfeeding causes any additional stress to the mother, formula will then be better.
Stress is passed on to the child in a hundred different little ways, even with the best of intent and the most martyr of mothers.
The right option is to balance everything, teach your child to look for the right path for their situation, good compromises, best of both worlds, not the toxic world of perfection, absolute rules, and black and white thinking.
47
@Rachel Alexandria Perhaps you believe that other parents are more subject to confirmation bias than you are. Is it possible that you're dismissing this column, and the research it cites, because you don't want to face the possibility that your time and effort could have perhaps been spent better?
40
Hi,
Good questions. I don’t believe I am and absolutely I don’t believe I wasted time breastfeeding or pumping. I know I didn’t based off numerous pieces of research I read. Furthermore, Her research and topics for discussion centered around things like IQ (among other health benefits). What I am stressing, or attempting to, is that there are numerous other benefits that she doesn’t address regarding breastfeeding. For example the article I sited early on about an infant’s oral microbiome and how that relates to infant health is a benefit from breastfeeding and not formula.
Again, it isn’t fair to only look at a handful of benefits and then make a definitive claim, as a whole. However, this seems to be what the author is doing.
31
Buzzkill alert: Why in the name of the Good Sweet Goddess would any informed person bear a child that will have to try to survive in the environmentally-degraded world we're bequeathing them? Why would one want their progeny to experience a Mad Max/Beyond Thunderdome dystopian future?
5
@Miss Anne Thrope
Movies aren't reality. You can go back in time, and whether it's a movie, a play, a book, or a pastor's speech on Sunday - there's always an audience and thus a market for the dark predictions of how these idle people nowdays are going to ruin all of civilization (Socrates).
3
A study by Israeli biochemists (they won the Nobel Prize for their efforts) show that breast milk changes by the week to support the baby for the first 8 months. Antibodies, antiviral, etc... properties that the infant needs. Don't know where the author got her evidence for the 'evidence' that she snarkily refers to in a very condescending way.
Breastfeeding is hard? Or is it inconvenient for her? Where did she get her ideas of what it's like to take care of an infant?
9
breast milk may do all those things. but despite extensive studies to prove otherwise, there is no evidence that those changes make a difference. You can drink tap water or highly purified and refined water, but there is no evidence that one is better for your health.
5
There are many women who cannot breastfeed for any one of a number of reasons or who are adoptive parents. I breastfed my first for 9 months but only went 2 months with my second thanks to mastitis. Absolutely no detectable difference in the outcome.
2
@alan Unless it's laced with lead.
Yipee! Good work Oster! A magnificent breath of fresh air thru the stultifying miasma of parenting judgmentalism. Parents and especially mothers are just inundated with this cra...er, stuff. A statistician once told me that people are really bad at evaluating relative risk. Well, we are just as bad at evaluating relative benefits too. And causality seems to be just way, way to complex for popular media to tease out. I often wonder what kind of "science" background the science editors have that would allow them to crazy statements from weak or shoddy studies. But then, having practiced medicine for 18 years, I can tell you that many doctors also buy into unsubstantiated claims. Humans seem to have an instinct to believe whatever they hear often enough. It's important to fight that instinct and look at sources and quality of information before running around repeating assumptions as fact.
Sigh. And of course when it comes to parenting their's a heavy dose of moralizing that goes with all the "known" recommendations. The biggest target of this moralizing is of course...mothers. Men are often cut enormous slack for their parenting choices but women? We are very accustom to passing judgment on women and that just ramps up once children and motherhood are involved.
Thank you for the dose of rationality Ms. Oster. I'll be looking for your other books!
PS. NYT, this is the caliber of parenting article you should be printing. Much better than the "playroom make over" junk!
6
My first child could not physically latch on to breast feed. I was devastated and so brainwashed about the importance of breastfeeding that I worked for three days with a consultant hooking up ridiculous tubes to my breasts to try to emulate the act and get her some milk. She ended up in the hospital orange with jaundice at four days old. The first thing the nurse did was stick a bottle of formula in her mouth. Despite being a well educated 31 year old woman I felt like the stupidest failure ever. Yes, try for the best practice based on the science and the plethora of books you've read. But don't beat yourself up and go to crazy lengths to be the perfect mom you've imagined you can be. Every parent and child is different. Most of us are just doing the best we can. Patience and flexibility are the best takeaways. Breathe and love.
17
Great last line!
Still smiling ...
2
So
“But again, this isn’t the same as saying that breast-feeding causes the higher I.Q. One study of Scandinavian 5-year-olds found that children who nursed longer had cognitive scores that were nearly 8 points higher on average. But their mothers were also richer, had more education and had higher I.Q. scores. Once the authors adjusted for even a few of these variables, the effects were much smaller.”
Ok. Yet.
“Finally, there are some parenting decisions where the data just isn’t much help at all, and family preferences have to take the front seat. One example is the question of whether to work outside the home.”
We don’t always adjust for variables???
“Nursing mothers reduce their relative risk of breast cancer by 4.3 percent for every 12 months they breast-feed, in addition to a relative decrease of 7 percent for each birth. Breast-feeding is particularly protective against some of the most aggressive tumors, called hormone receptor-negative or triple-negative tumors, which are more common among African-American women, studies show. It also lowers the risk by one-third for women who are prone to cancer because of an inherited BRCA1 mutation.
Women who breast-feed are also less likely to develop ovarian cancer, Type 2 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis and may have improved cardiovascular health.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/well/family/breast-feeding-is-good-for-the-mother-and-not-just-the-baby.html?searchResultPosition=16
Is breastfeeding Times click bait?
4
Mothers and fathers need to use their instincts when parenting, and avoid articles like this one.
7
mothers who take drugs and drink lots of booze definitely should not breast feed and formula is way better than having a baby whose drinking breast fed milk containing drugs and booze. Common sense is needed so parents are not guilt ridden.
2
The deeper you look, the more we have to face that for many issues, the best course is unknowable. And that's a good thing - it means there isn't a really disastrous option between the different sleep training, breast feeding versus formula and other decisions to be made - make a reasonable decision among the mainstream options, you're good.
However - your problem at the wedding was choosing to breast feed in a closet. One of the best lessons of becoming a mother is to let go of all the worry about modesty. Just feed the baby at the table where everyone else is eating. Use a cover if you like and if baby will accept it, or just deal with it if your baby (like so many) pushes the cover aside. There's not a man nor woman there who hasn't seen a nipple, and for a few moments as baby latches - prudes can just deal with it - or best of all, if it offends them, they can choose not to look. A 100 degree closet is no option at all.
3
Re: Breastfeeding..
It's not all just black and white. I breast fed, pumped and bottle-fed and also supplemented with an organic/biodynamic formula imported from Germany because I wasn't making enough milk.
I'm actually pumping at work right now, ha!
Point is, there are ways to be flexible and there are pros and cons to all of these approaches. You can take bits and pieces from different philosophies and apply them to your parenting style. When parents are stressed out/unhappy/feel guilty and it can affect the child so just try to relax!
Re. the breastfeeding cost-benefit analysis, I think it's one of those activities that typically gets easier and more enjoyable with practice. Don't do it if it doesn't work for you, but, I think new mom's should be encouraged to give it a try (with support from a lactation consultant as needed) for the first few months at least.
I'm so glad I stuck with it even though breastfeeding was difficult at first. Even when working and pumping daily, less bottles to clean, no formula to buy, and the quick and easy convenience when I was with my baby made the difficult period, for me at least, worth it.
Moreover, once it got easy, it also felt really, really good. I remember moments of breast feeding as the best natural high ever. Nursing releases oxytocin and endorphins. I'm surprised that this benefit wasn't included in the author's analysis.
I realize that some women's difficulties with breastfeeding are much worse than mine were (the 2nd child was easier), and I'm guessing that maybe not all women get to experience that wonderful high, so, of course, everyone has to do their own cost-benefit analysis. I just hope that new mothers take into account it usually gets much easier and can actually feel wonderful.
Finally, no one should be pumping or feeding in a closet. Of course it's not going to feel as good, and it's likely to be stressful (again, for mother and baby) if we treat it as something that has to be hidden.
8
@law student
It's not always practical - and for mine - I didn't produce enough. You can't starve your baby for the first few months, so if you are having trouble, then formula is good. Realistically the difference is minimal - breast is best - but it's nearly a photo finish with formula, so anything that is negative about breastfeeding is enough to make formula the better choice.
1
@SusanStoHelit It’s not either/or. I had production problems myself, and on doctor’s advice supplemented breastfeeding with formula. My newborn, miserable for the first two weeks while I struggled to give him enough, subsequently thrived. I strongly believe breastfeeding is the better choice, but am grateful that moms like me (and those who must work full time and face other challenges) have the option of formula.
1
There's no logic to colic.
My daughter was colicky during the 2000 election debacle. By sheer luck, we happened upon a weird solution: three hours every evening in her swing with a picture of George W. Bush in view. She'd quietly swing back and forth with her eyes locked on W. It had to be W, she screamed wildly the times we tried Jeb or Bush Sr. instead. I'll never forget my yellow dog Democrat ex-husband cajoling her with a different picture, "Come on, honey, look at Al! He wants to be your friend!" After two months of this she finally outgrew the colic, but I still have that picture.
182
@Kim S
You are so lucky!
My daughter favored a particular very chirpy, happy erectile dysfunction actor on an add that was on frequently.
15
@Kim S
This is a funny little anecdote, but I wonder what's actually going on here. Maybe she picked up on how fundamentally depressed Gore was about the state of the world, and how oblivious and happy-go-lucky W was. Maybe she saw a snippet of the debate at a critical moment and decided the world was a choice between two attitudes. For what it's worth, I still cry when I look at pictures of Al Gore.
8
@Kim S
This is so funny to me because our eldest loved watching Obama.
11
Thank you for some balance. When I had my son I decided to stay home as long as I could, but we couldn’t manage without additional income. So I opened a licensed family daycare in my home. I also called the nearest La Leche rep to learn about meetings and other support. She eventually commented, “Oh I did daycare too for a little while, but I stopped because it just wasn’t fair to my kids.” I still recall the burning sensation I felt all over. Women can be each other’s worst enemies. We need to stop it.
9
Amen.
Could we next have a sensible, data-driven article about children’s educational outcomes? I would love to know how public, private, secular, religious, charter, unionized, non-unionized, racially diverse, homogeneous, single-sex, coeducational school outcomes compare. Actually, facing decisions about our local urban public schools versus going the dreaded (for me) private route, that is where I’d like to make a data-driven choice. As it stands now, I believe most parents who even have the option to choose between public and private schools do so based on prejudice and distorted views. A data-driven analysis would be of great benefit. Thanks.
4
Every baby is different. Every family is different. You have to figure out what works best for you and your children. Whether breast or bottle fed, co-sleeping or down-the-hallway-with-a-baby-monitor sleeping, kids will usually grow up just fine as long as their parent(s) work to figure out solutions that everyone can live, love, sleep, and thrive with.
5
I suggest that what the parents want, what makes them feel good, isn't nearly as important as the fact that many children are suicidal. All that sleep training (abandonment), day care (abandonment), and feeding of chemicals instead of mother's milk (abandonment) leads to children who don't feel valued or loved. To add insult to injury, these abandoned, unattached children are left to the mercy of schools and other mal-adapted children for 7 hours a day, 180 days a year, for 13 years.
I say this as a professional working mother of two sons who nursed at my breast for a total of 7 years, co-slept with me until age 4, and chose to accept the challenge of natural child birth twice. Where there's a will to acknowledge those tiny beings as human and worthy of effort, there's a way.
20
@Beanie
It is hard to imagine any tragedy worse than the suicide of a child. Do you know of any study that links youth suicide to the factors you cite? If not, think the cruelty of attributing child suicide to the mainstream parenting choices you describe. Often these are made in hopes of enhancing a child’s life.
If you are worried about factors that contribute to youth suicide, there are studies that link child suicide to the presence and improper storage of firearms in the home. (Harvard School of Public Health https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/?s=Youth) parents should know of these.
33
@Beanie
Congratulations! I hope you feel proud of yourself. And thank you for denigrating the choices (sometimes not choices - many people CAN NOT breastfeed or CAN NOT stay home because they need to earn an income) of others. This is helpful and productive.
On a less sarcastic note, you seem to have completely missed the point of this article.
30
Chemicals are in everything - including breast milk. They are neither good nor bad because they are chemicals. Also day care as “abandonment” is incredibly harsh - I know caring, loving people who run day cares that are stimulating and safe environments for kids. And plenty of caring, loving parents who drop their kids off at them to go to work. Don’t demonize working parents, moms OR dads, as “abandoners.”
23
As a L&D nurse, I was required to inform women that choosing to bottle feed would decrease their children's IQs, even though I knew, statistically, that that information was bogus. In order to achieve and maintain "Baby Friendly" status, all of us were required to shame mothers who chose to bottle feed, to close the nursery and require new parents to keep babies in their rooms, no matter how exhausted or sleep deprived those new parents were. Mothers who had trouble producing enough milk were instructed to hand express, then feed, then pump, every two hours, leaving them with no time to rest. Frankly, my colleagues and I refused to adhere to many of these unrealistic guidelines. Formula is not poison, and new parents need their rest, and babies can be watched by nurses for an hour or so while parents nap.
14
I’ve always been a fan and I’m all about the evidence-based approach. But the sleep training section really frustrated me because it ignored some of the newest research, including the effect sleep training may have on epigentics, inhibiting gene expression, and an ever newer peer-reviewed study showing a correlation between responsive parenting and higher incidence of secure attachment. The studies that show no harm rely on parents self-reporting. And while the study that found high cortisol in infants left to CIO was included in this article, I think the conclusion that was provided was quite biased. Parents have plenty they find themselves feeling guilty about but I think there is something wrong with society when we say that parents shouldn’t feel guilty for ignoring their crying infant. Sure, there are extinction methods that aren’t as extreme as others and may not be problematic. But I think it is a dangerous and slippery slope to tell people it causes no harm to let an infant cry without any qualifiers about the increased risk of SIDS and caution about the degree to which “sleep training” in its most extreme forms (like leaving a baby and not responding for 12 hours while they cry so hard they vomit) may certainly cause harm.
6
One of the smartest statements I have heard about parenting was said to me by a woman who was a therapist and a mother of 4 kids who came out great, and she said that the way to tell who is a good parent and who is not, the good parents fret all the time if they are doing the right thing, while the bad ones are the parents who think they are great. The very fact that a parent worries about their child, worries if they are doing the right thing, means they care enough to be a good parent.
The person in question also had a perspective on being a parent, she said if they could go to the bathroom by themselves and tie their shoes by the time they went off, to college or to their own life, you as a parent did your job:)
12
Emily, your work on early-stage parenting is possibly the best and most important use of economics today. I’m serious. What’s more important that all the time, work, stress and money that goes into trying to raise the next generation? We try so hard and yet, if we are being honest, we know so little. It’s incredibly helpful that you delve into the questions that every parent worries about and report back on the evidence (and its shortcomings). You have an important research career, you do fantastic work, but I implore you to keep doing this. You have no idea the value it brings to many others. Most economists can only dream to have the same impact you do. Thank you from my family to yours.
2
“Maybe sleep training is very good for some kids — they really need the uninterrupted sleep — and there is a risk of damaging your child by not sleep training.”
Since sleep training is not the only way to help infants get the sleep they need, this seems unnecessarily alarmist. At any rate, the choice caregivers must make is not between sleep training/no sleep training and the infant getting enough sleep/not enough sleep.
4
Hmm. I'd probably just try to forget that I read this article.
And not even because I'm gainfully employed or anything.
5
Remember Dr. Spock - Baby + Child Care
Do what you feel is correct.
The parent is the boss.
4
The older I get, the more convinced I am that nature rather than nurture has more influence in how your children grow and develop, given you don't abuse them and love them to pieces. My 2 kids had their personalities in the womb and were and are as different as can be. They are both adults now and I wish I didn't worry as much as I did. Love them lots and all will be well.
5
The more technology we bring into our lives, the more we start to see our options to raise kids as a binary argument. I don't think this is a good way to decide what choices to make for parenting.
When it comes to understanding breastfeeding and formula feeding outcomes, it's hard to say what side you will land on because our genes handle environmental and technological inputs differently. We are just starting to get a grasp on this from studies that look at our use of plastics and other man-made stuff.
We need to give parents a broader scope to examine their choices and the potential hazards that can come from making certain choices. For example, the water that gets blended with formula is problematic. Our water systems are precarious. If you recently read the EPA's research on our tap water you'll be impressed by what lurks in what we drink. These chemicals are known to cause Ulcerative Colitis and other first world diseases. If we take the sterilized water route, that has nothing to add to the babies diet and it's fairly expensive. So it's never going to be a clear cut answer. You need to look at your family history; water quality; economics and then make a sound decision. I have learned that nothing is forever besides living with an autoimmune disease.
We also need to do more qualitative studies that come from a socially constructed paradigm that relies more on maternal accounts such as interviews and ethnography to understand what constrains women's choices.
I am so glad to see Emily Oster's work published here. As a teacher of economics, I am always looking for examples for my students of economists at work in novel ways. Noty everyone is Paul Krugman. And, economics is disproportionately male, even at the high school level (in my experience). I think women and girls, and underrepresented groups, are more likely to be drawn to the field when they see the abundance of ways economic thought can be applied. And popular press is an important vehicle for this. The discipline won't become more diverse until more of this type of work is highlighted in mainstream media. Thank you!
6
Thank you for finally framing child rearing decisions in terms of what’s best for the Mother and Father! They are the ones doing all of the giving and adjusting. This incessant focus on how adult choices have magnificent effects on infants and toddlers is unbalanced. And it’s most disturbing when parents imagine that being run down and exhausted is a hallmark of being good to their children.
9
How rational!
How refreshing!
Thank you.
8
As a super-earth-mama-La-Leche—League-would-breastfeed-till-they-leave-for-college-if-she-could mom friend of mine said:
You know what the wrong way to feed a baby is? Don’t feed it at all.
Breast, formula, as long as there are calories and nutrients you’re doing fine.
22
Crying doesn’t sound as loud outside. Trust me. Go outside with your baby and don’t be afraid to give a bottle at a special occasion like a wedding. Honestly, it will be ok.
6
b. Yipee! Good work Oster! A magnificent breath of fresh air thru the stultifying miasma of parenting judgmentalism. Parents and especially mothers are just inundated with this stuff. A statistician once told me that people are really bad at evaluating relative risk. Well, we are just as bad at evaluating relative benefits too. And causality seems to be just way, way to complex for popular media to tease out. I often wonder what kind of "science" background the science editors have that would allow them to crazy statements from weak or shoddy studies. But then, having practiced medicine for 18 years, I can tell you that many doctors also buy into unsubstantiated claims. Humans seem to have an instinct to believe whatever they hear often enough. It's important to fight that instinct and look at sources and quality of information before running around repeating assumptions as fact.
Sigh. And of course when it comes to parenting their's a heavy dose of moralizing that goes with all the "known" recommendations. The biggest target of this moralizing is of course...mothers. Men are often cut enormous slack for their parenting choices but women? We are very accustom to passing judgment on women and that just ramps up once children and motherhood are involved.
Thank you for the dose of rationality Ms. Oster. I'll be looking for your other books!
PS. NYT, this is the caliber of parenting article you should be printing. Much better than the "playroom make over" junk!
4
So relieved to read about sleep training and finally putting that discussion to rest!
1
What, exactly, does this article put to rest? The fact that even children who are trained to sleep on a schedule that is convenient for their caretakers can turn out well-adjusted could just as well point to infant resilience rather than any inherent benefit of sleep training. For me, the data that matters most is that provided by the child herself, and crying is data. To ignore it in favor of what one read in a book once is a mistake.
3
A baby screaming from 6 to 8 should probably be in a 6pm to 6am sleep schedule with naps at 8 and noon if family circumstances permit, moving to a 7 to 7 schedule with naps at 9am and 1pm when they mature. The book healthy sleep habits happy child by Dr John Weissbluth is pretty amazing.
2
This exactly. Getting your baby on a beneficial sleep schedule doesn’t need to involve crying or “sleep training”. I have 4 kids: good sleep keeps us all sane.
1
When are we going to get over the breast feeding vs non breast feeding debate? I’m 70 and it’s been going on ever since I can remember.
Just love your children! They’re not going to give two hoots how they got fed as a baby. What they are going to remember goes so beyond the breast or the bottle! And for heaven sakes - let them feed their children as they wish - it’s none of your business, Grandma.
Stop! Enough is enough!
14
There is judgement coming from all directions (including from this author and commentators), mostly because we are all hoping to do the best for our child and we worry that we are not. It's hard on mothers who have choices, and it's hard on mothers who do not. It's just hard to raise a child. I have always believed that when we judge other women (mothers especially) it is mostly a reflection of our own worry and insecurity about ourselves and our choices. I think what will help parents (mothers in particular) is to look less at data and look more to their own intuition. Of course, sometimes we don't trust our intuition, or feel so confused it's hard to listen to it, or maybe we simply need guidance to help sort out the information. Ultimately, parents have to trust themselves, to not look to what everyone else says is right or wrong and go with what they value, what they need, what they believe is in alignment with the life they are living or want to live. Because most people turn out fine, it is less about outcome and more about how do you want to connect to your child.
6
This is a great collection of data on what actually helps and hinders, but the article missed one of the most important perks of breastfeeding: it's free! It's distressing to read that less educated and poorer women are less likely to breastfeed, people who would benefit the most from avoiding the costs of formula. There's no shame in bottle feeding, but there is still a good reason to better educate women on the benefits.
She also missed discussing the other extreme of sleeping: family beds. Is bringing little ones into bed so everyone can sleep better a death sentence or a brilliant idea?
But she's clearly writing for a particular audience when she says, "family preferences have to take the front seat. One example is the question of whether to work outside the home." Of course whether or not to work isn't a matter of "preference" for many families.
184
@Marie Breastfeeding is only “free” if women’s time is worth nothing. If you assess the time it takes me to feed or pump milk, the cost of formula is significantly less than I make at my job during the same period of time.
144
@Nancy
Breastfeeding is a LOT faster than bottle-feeding, especially with an older infant who is experienced and good at nursing efficiently.
21
@Marie
And breast-feeding is so easy!!! No shopping, no prep, no clean-up, no washing small plastic bits....
21
Children are not data. However one chooses to raise their child, mother nature will always be the finest guide to health. The laws of nature are the most eloquent laws we have and the world is only served when we learn to live in harmony with these laws. That most all mammals breast feed might tell us something about what is intended for us. I have been amazed to see giant Nestle ads in Guatemala, aimed at the Maya, that suggest that formula is "better" than breast milk. The hubris of this is overwhelming. It doesn't take scientific data to prove the benefits of breast feeding above the alternatives, regardless of the stories asserted by the ego of modern humans and western patriarchal medicine.
5
@elf army,
The place where breastfeeding is undeniably superior to bottle feeding is the developing world, where most women don't have continuos access to clean water and formula feedings mean more diarrhea cases and higher infant mortality.
4
Data, data, data. You can find in data whatever you want to find.
But babies are not data. Babies and mothers and fathers are not aggregates of information. We are flesh and blood bodies of emotions and intelligence.
Babies need time, security, time, love, time, love, acceptance, and we get this in different ways. But don't write off breastfeeding and all its benefits to both children and mothers. And sleep training? It may be beneficial to a parent, but what infant who is crying out for closeness, for intimate contact, for reassurance, for whatever reason, is going to be reassured? Maybe some kids get over it given their later relationship with parents and siblings. Maybe some kids carry with them a residual distrust of their parents that they can't even put their fingers on. And this lingers with them the rest of their lives.
And God knows we all have to work. And work is important. But if you can take the TIME to be with your baby, your infant, in those early months to the first year, and give them what they need, you will most likely set a secure course for the rest of their lives.
5
"One woman told me her doctor had warned her that by quitting breast-feeding, she was costing her child three I.Q. points." Wow, what a doc! When breast feeding became very difficult for my wife she felt terrible, went to her terrific doc who said "and you feel terrible, right? Well, don't, you have a healthy, beautiful child, it's okay to do what you need to do." Both of my girls grew up to be brilliant (of course, what's a father gonna say?) just going by our gut most of the time. Sleep training consisted of my wife laying down with them until they went to sleep which left me alone many an evening but she got great sleep as did the kids who (did I mention?) grew up to be brilliant, and gorgeous, and wonderful.
215
@David Shaw, lol! That was my version of sleep training and my children followed that version with their children. It is inconvenient but helpful to the children. I slept with my mom until I was seven. I'm sure it was inconvenient for my parents I had horrible nightmares and sleep terrors. Many a night my mother had to rock me back to sleep. My parents talked me into sleeping in the room with my two siblings when I was seven. Strangely enough, I have been fearless as an adult. If I hear a noise in the night I'm always the one to go investigate.
16
@David Shaw
You do realize that might not be what the "bad" doctor said, or how he/she said it? That is how the mom remembers what was said.
The large majority of pediatricians would give advice along the lines of what your doctor told your family.
2
@David Shaw. By seeing your daughters as the brilliant and wonderful people they have always been, you have done more to lift them up than any parenting philosophy or choice. Imagine a world where we all see and acknowledge the brilliance and value of every child.
5
We may continue to devour every data available and try to chase every guideline. But perhaps studying all these options boil down to one conclusion: as long as new mothers feel upset when they cannot reconcile their romantic vision of continuing their lives as usual with ease ("... she’d latch right on while I enjoyed my mascarpone French toast...") with the dark reality of hiding as if they were committing a shameful act ("...trying to nurse my screaming daughter in a 100-degree closet at my brother’s wedding...) we will get nowhere. Motherhood is not an illness to be approached with a fistful of the newest scientific data to avoid some truly dreadful mistakes. But our new mothers live in a society which does not offer paid maternity leaves, shames women who breastfeed in public and gives them very little support in general. And they continue to be anxious, uncertain and worried about all the wrong choices they will potentially make.
246
@Yva
I totally agree.
Maybe we need to get motherhood out of the closet !
3
As a single working father of four, I’m regularly momterrupted and momsplained to about parenting issues- even though I’m the most experienced parent in almost any room.
I appreciate your acknowledgement that there is limited real information on the “right” way to care for kids.
More acknowledgement that female-parent focused parenting is just another parenting option would also be great.
297
@Mark Shumate - I strongly agree. I was a stay at home dad for the first year and a half of my child's life and continue to do the majority of parenting with a more flexible work schedule.
I got used to be shunned by mommy cabals on the playground. parties, etc. and momsplained (I love that) anytime I did anything with my kid that looked like I was struggling. Or, there were lots of judgmental comments about my wife who continued to work by choice.
In general, from my experience, I found women mommy groups (and especially the white, over-educated affluent ones) to be the most cutthroat, obnoxious, unpleasant and judging people around. I'm glad I was able to help spare my wife having to be subjected to their misery.
Oh, and my kid's doing just fine.
63
@Bob Lob
The sanctimommy groups like that will do the same to everyone who disagrees with them, doesn't follow their latest fad - male or female. They are horrible people to be around - mothers hate them as much as fathers do. Good mothers and fathers groups have no issue with male or female primary caregivers, and know that each parent has a unique situation as each child is different, each family is different.
But santimommies and martyr mommies - they're rotten to everyone.
28
@Mark Shumate
Gotta say - momterrupted and momsplained happens to every parent ever - happens as much, quite possibly more, to women as men.
There's nothing like having a guy (who is not a lactation consultant) tell you how to properly latch, the right way to breastfeed - unless it's all of society, men and women, telling you whether or not it's OK to feed your baby somewhere, and how a coverup solves everything.
44
This article is great, thank you! And being a data scientist, I did the same kind of research when I had kids.
But I do worry that the bigger issue is being ignored. The vast majority of women do not have these choices to make, they bottle feed and sleep train because they have to.
So, while I like this article, I hope the economist’s next article examines how many American women have these options.
Until all women have the same rights, that’s where our energy should be.
305
@Human Bean
The lack of parental leave in the USA is a national disgrace.
3
This is fantastic. As a health economist this speaks to my data driven mind as well as experience. I breast fed 3 of 4 kids, really no difference in school performance etc. I sleep trained all of them with varying degrees of success - they are all securely attached to me and others. And I held down a job that involved long hours and significant travel and each of them have told me they loved that I was happy at my job. They have told me I am a role model - my boys and my girls - and they are so proud of me. I think we need to be gentle with each other, respect and support each other. Motherhood is not a competition, it is a journey that is long, scary, wonderful and full of love.
384
@Bismarck
Indeed!
2
"But their mothers were also richer, had more education and had higher I.Q. scores. Once the authors adjusted for even a few of these variables, the effects were much smaller."
I've been waiting a long time for someone to finally admit this non-starter.
I was breastfeeding in the moment when a rabid obsession had overtaken society about it. It was clear to me very early on that it was not working. It was painful and I produced almost no milk. Any putative gains were offset by my dawning awareness that my children might very well be nutritionally impaired by the effort to breast feed.
I was not alone. The year my son was born, "ER" had an episode, drawn from headlines, where a baby died because the mother had been hounded into breastfeeding alone; he starved to death. That jolted me into sensible action and I immediately began using formula with as much breast milk as I could produce. The relief was staggering. My children thrived.
Imagine doing something that hurts 12 X a day and feeling like a failure because others scold, hound and lecture and the doctors' offices have posters abjuring you to do this one thing, as if it were abusive not to.My early days as a mother were irreparably marred.
Years later, I saw a young mother weeping in front of the formula shelf. Her hand kept reaching and falling back. I learned her circumstances were like mine and told her that choosing what was best for her and her baby wasn't shameful; I just wish someone had told me the same.
530
I was/am a single mother of twins. Our first visit to the doctor, I was nervous. I really didn’t want to breastfeed and thought it would be easier to do formula to satisfy the needs of two babies. Pumping at work was completely unworkable for me. The doc asked tentatively if I was breastfeeding. I said no, expecting a lecture. She said “good,” and pointed out that making enough milk would probably be hard, and not even counting the difficulty of shuffling and feeding two babies alone. (With bottles, I would often sit them in carseats and/or prop them beside me and feed both of them at the same time.). Fast forward. My kids are thriving, tall for their age, perfectly healthy, excel in school, and are completely bonded with and love their mom. People have to make decisions that are best for them. As the doc pointed out, she grew up on formula and became a doctor. Thank god I had that kind of support early on. Oh, and I sleep trained too, after one kid wouldn’t sleep for a year. Turns out Mom is a whole lot happier and better for baby when she’s had some sleep!
93
@AhBrightWings
Of course it can be painful the first few weeks, that skin in very tender and never even sees the sun at the beach! Two of mine were born in July, so I actually found a place in the yard to get a bit of sun on them before the births and it helped a lot. The one born in December is lucky he was the “baby” because only long experience and a very strong will got me through the first three weeks of that one! In a way, I wish I’d had this data then, but I really liked the sheer convenience of breastfeeding.
17
@AhBrightWings How wonderful of you to reach out to that mother in the formula aisle! "Breast is best" should not be the focus - "Fed is Best" is what we should strive for. Those who can't or won't breastfeed shouldn't be guilted or shamed.
41
There are many ways to say “Do what makes your life and your baby’s life easier and more relaxing.”
Parenthood is a volunteer situation. At least it should be, by choice and design (looking at you, you “pro life” forced pregnancy folks). When seen as such, and accepted it becomes a bit easier to get with the program as it were.
But can we please ditch the nursing covers? The nursing in closets? Bathrooms? I nursed everywhere from the Madison Ave bus to the bread aisle at the supermarket. I looked at my baby, figuring that if I can’t see them, they can’t see me. Modesty can be maintained with a modicum of effort. If folks are put off by doing what comes naturally, it’s their problem not mine.
397
@Pam
Nursing class for both parents before the babe is brilliant. Would have probably not tried nursing a screaming baby in a 100 degree closet. I am cheerleading the class, not criticizing the Mom.
12
So true! How is it that breastfeeding our babies in 2019 is still deemed some sort of shameful activity, such that it needs to be covered up? I nursed both my babies in the 1980s. Nursing "covers" did not exist except in the form of what we used to call receiving blankets. I nursed my kids in public all the time and was able to do so discreetly simply by wearing a top that lifted easily from the bottom. Many times people would stop to gaze at my son or daughter, having no idea they were breastfeeding, thinking only that they were cuddling or sleeping.
36
@Eileen
I did the same--once the lift from the bottom method was discovered (probably re-deiscovered). My first was born in 1969, though, and I struggled horribly in toilet stalls, and under blankets on hot days; mostly I felt horribly isolated even though my Mom was a strong support. I won’t even go into how UNhelpful the hospital was in those days!
5
Dr. Oster deserves our admiration for exposing, repeatedly and systematically, that much of the advice we receive from fellow parents or even from physicians is farfetched, based on little more than hearsay and speculation.
4
I've breastfed, co-slept with them instead of sleep-trained, and stayed home/homeschooled 2 children who are now in college. Do you know what is best for all children and families? Nothing!
What worked for me and my family may or may not work for you are your family. Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, homeschooling are no more a panacea to society's and one's family than bottle feeding, sleep training, and public schooling. Ultimately the hardest decision you will make as a parent is to listen to your children and yourself and do that regardless of what society, friends, or other parents say is best.
17
@Pegeen Yes! Thank you. What i was trying to say in my sarcastic way.
1
As grandma, I am enjoying learning all the new data-driven parenting behaviors that are helping new moms and dads better enjoy their babies. Dr. Karp's 5 S's are a perfect example; going thru the list never failed to quiet "colic". How else can a three month old tell us that he is tired of being held and just wants to lie quietly on his stomach?
Sleep training isn't a big deal when it's used routinely on a well-fed baby from an early age.
Breastfeeding and putting baby to sleep safely in his own bed work well together. No need to risk SIDS.
My daughter is a much better parent than I was thanks to the new data.
I have three adult children who turned out very well - intelligent, socially and politically engaged, successful careers, lovely partners and loving relationships, really close to their parents but independent in running their lives. It is kind of what every parent hopes for.
I had a 6 month maternity leave with each child and worked 3-4 days a week while they grew up. I breastfed but moved mostly to bottles when I returned to work. I let my children cry it out, travelled for work and pleasure without the children, spent time with the kids but also prioritized my own need for sleep and mental stimulation to keep my sanity. Maybe I was a selfish mother but I was happy and so were my kids.
Why do so many teens and young adults suffer from anxiety? Mothers who always put their kids before their own (and their partners' needs) aren't always raising independent and self-reliant people. Live your life and enjoy your children. They will turn out fine.
8
As one who came down on the easy-to-criticize side of all three topics here (I did NOT breastfeed, we DID sleep train and I DID go back to work after my maternity leave -- and ooh boy did I get a lot of feedback from other mommies on all three...), I enjoyed this and loved the ultimate suggestion that every family situation is unique, and there is no right or wrong; as a researcher, I also appreciated the data analysis and alternate translation of results that can yield to different recommendations (which is good advice that all should heed when reading research). At the end of the day, parents need to make the decisions that are best for themselves and their kids; my daughter is 18 now, and did not suffer from chronic ear infections, is not obese, and does not appear to suffer from attachment issues (most days at least...). Others should suspend their judgement and often ill-informed and/or intrusive advice!
7
Working mothers have higher ratings of self worth and self esteem and this translates to long-term happiness. Having something for one's self provides an identity other than "mother". When you're holding a newborn, it's hard to realize that, soon enough, the infant to toddler to elementary school transition will be complete and that per-adolescent is ready for independence-- including time away from parents (especially omni-present mom) and in their own space or with friends. I think there is a sadness and possibly even a kind of depression akin to post-partum that mother's-- particularly those that have been so very involved in their child's development-- experience. With all of the research on being a good parent, I wonder about the need for research examining how to be there but also on how to not be there and to be ok with that. Raised right, our babies grow into good citizens that can think, feel, and act on their own. They get to have their own desires, preferences, and secrets. And they should-- after all, we did (didn't we)?
3
" I work because I like to. I love my kids! They are amazing. But I wouldn’t be happy staying home with them. " . This quote pretty much says it all. When you decide to have children, their needs come before yours. That includes setting up their microbiome for LIFE by breastfeeding , figuring out WHY a child would scream fro hours ( clearly there is an issue that needs so be worked out , like possibly digestive issues from some chemical laden formula, or say, life long abandonment and attachment issues from " not staying home with them" because you wont be happy. Mind blowing.
3
@Pundette, by telling a woman who produced very little milk about sitting in the sun to make breastfeeding less painful, you have completely and utterly missed AhBrightWings point (and the point of this article).
I had the same problem. When we put a bottle in my 2-week-old son's mouth for the first time, the relief was visible on HIS face. At last, he was getting food, rather than working for 40 minutes to get too little. After that day, he finally started gaining weight. That was a horrific two weeks for all of us, but especially for him.
Yet before and after that day, I felt hounded by smug breast-is-BEST (and bottle is WORST!!) types who sent a clear message that I was failing by using a bottle. They were "concerned" and invited me to "drop by the clinic for help."
For the life of me, I can't understand why this kind of ideological pressure is put on women, especially when we're most in need of honest, objective help. I salute Dr. Oster!
18
my experience is that short of abuse, neglect or deprivation, people generally turn out fine. there don't seem to be parental fine tuning knobs on shaping personality or intelligence. how many of you think your parents created your personality?
I think parents of infants overestimate their influence on personality or disposition. so far as commenters boasting about their kids with genius IQ, my experience is that high intelligence generally doesn't correlate to self actualization.
10
@just a mom Certainly parents can be abusive or particularly bad examples, but the biggest influence will be the friends the child has or doesn't have.
3
Data. Who raises children based on data? This horrifying opinion piece relegates breastfeeding to a primitive practice that civilization has finally freed us from. We're back in the '50's when we were told science had all the answers. Then there is the bias against that icky practice that I just have to at least try if I am going to be a good mother. One question: Why is an intelligent, independent woman in a closet feeding her baby?
5
I am so sick of people trying to downplay breast feeding. I get that it's hard. I've breast fed three kids while working full time and have spent my fair share of time in uncomfortable places with a cry/hungry baby and pumping in closets.
Breast feed or don't breast feed. Do want works for you, your family, and your situation. Don't feel guilty if you don't breastfeed, or when you stop breast feeding. Ignore other people's opinions because they are not you, they are not feeding your child, and they get no say. But please stop touting reasons why breast feeding is just not that great, not worth it, or over hyped.
Breast feeding is good, and it's okay to not do it too. I saved money by not buying formula, but spent money on pumping supplied. This whiplash of breast is best and now it's not is ridiculous. Judging people on either side of this also is ridiculous. New moms need to hear that they should do what works for them and ignore the naysayers on either side.
Also, come out of those closets - it's okay to breast feed in public. Once I came to terms with that, and as my baby and I got better at nursing discreetly, it made my life a lot easier and made me less self conscious. Generally, people are not paying attention to you and won't even notice.
147
@Vmaria honestly everyone has different experience. Formula is almost as good as mom's milk nowadays. I genuinely don't see why you have to be sick of people's different opinion or experience. Take it easy. There are many ways of raising up a kid.
10
@TT there have been several opinion pieces lately in this same vein regarding breastfeeding. I’m tired of parents who feel the need to downplay its benefits. I’m sorry others are so judgmental about mom’s choosing to do it or not do it. My point was that parents should make the choice they want and not feel the need to degrade the opposite decision.
13
@TT
It's impossible - and false - to say that "formula is almost as good as mom's milk nowadays". To begin with, they still haven't even identified all of the multitude of components in human milk. It simply cannot be artificially replicated. Yes, formulas are better than they ever have been, but they are not and will not be "as good as" breastmilk.
5
With 8 billion people and counting, having children is just an expensive vanity project in this day and age. Don't try and act like it's anything else.
4
@Childfree Woman
Maybe large families are an issue and you should aim your bitter censure in that direction. Family per se isn't a vanity project but a leap of faith, a beautiful affirmation of humanity. I am sorry you cannot see the value of that. People don't need to stop having children, they just need to stop having too many.
2
I didn't breast feed our son because I had to relocate to another country with my husband. My husband insisted on sleep training on our son. I did quit my job and stay at home as a full time mom for several years. I had never joined any mommy groups or listened to any moms' advice. My son has always been a great kid, mentally and physically healthy, hard working, intelligent and a bit nerdy. As a parent, I realize that every kid is different and what makes a kid thrive is gene, stable and normal family, loving atmosphere, caring parents, solid and consistent support and most importantly, parents behavior as role models. Breast feeding or not, it doesn't matter that much.
4
I’m a full time working mom (physician, so I love data) and I’m still nursing my 15 month old. I agree with some of other comments here that articles like this that espouse the viewpoint that “breastfeeding is hard, so just use formula because the outcomes are not significantly different” are not helpful. Breastfeeding is the biologic norm and does not need to be proven superior to the alternatives. It is hard for many because maternity leaves are short, sufficient time is not provided at work for pumping, and women feel the need to nurse in 100 degree closets with covers on. I have continued to breastfeed because it makes my baby (and me) happy, which is normal. It was not easy to get through the first year while working, and I completely understand why other women choose formula. But if we as a society continue to demand evidence that breastfeeding is superior to formula, support for nursing & pumping will continue to diminish, and women will feel increasingly pressured to forgo breastfeeding. We can support breastfeeding without vilifying formula.
29
@SD. You should know that many of us needed to breastfeed in a closet because our highly obervant and social babies wouldn’t feed well with the distractions out in public and a closet might be the only place with the proper lack of stimuli. As a physician you should be aware that every baby is different and not major assumptions.
So basically this article is saying that you should just trust yourself, use common sense and know whatever you worry about, or do, you are not alone. There is no "right" way to parent other than do your loving best, and don't compare yourself to anyone else. More data is not necessarily helpful because, as we know, data can be made to prove or disprove anything. It doesn't matter what books or experts "advise" - by all means listen or read, but if it doesn't work for you the advice is useless.
4
@Sam "More data is not necessarily helpful because, as we know, data can be made to prove or disprove anything."
This claim is anti-intellectual at best and outright misleading at worse. Data can be manipulated sure but that can be sniffed out. Data CAN and often does reveal objective truth, to say otherwise is nihilistic and frankly, cringy.
1
I’m so tired of these anti-breastfeeding opinion pieces that pop up regularly here. Look, nature designed human milk for human babies. Just like she designed elephant milk for elephant babies and kangaroo milk for kangaroo babies. Breastfeed or don’t breastfeed, but don’t pretend that a healthy mother’s milk isn’t the perfect food for her baby.
15
@Patricia Sears
Nobody is arguing that it isn’t nature’s Plan A.
What many people object to is the strident hounding of women for whom it really doesn’t work out. Thank heavens we have a safe and effective Plan B, and being glad for that is not “anti-breastfeeding.”
16
@Patricia Sears
And I’m so tired of the insane, lactivist rhetoric that makes “healthy mothers” who can’t breastfeed (despite lots of interventions, medications and an overwhelming sense of despair about not being able to breastfeed, compounded by postpartum hormones that already make one feel overwhelmed) feel that they’re failing their children by not relying solely on breast milk. Breast milk is great if you can provide it, but if not, formula is just as good, because the alternative is your baby dying, or in the case of some, allowing your baby to suffer irreparable brain damage (cerebral palsy is a real danger) caused by severe dehydration.
I’m tired of the sanctimonious opinions of other women who don’t understand what an emotional roller coaster it is to try for months to breastfeed, and to simply have to give up, because your body just won’t comply. Or what it is to carry that sense of failure years after your child is grown, healthy, and shows none of the signs that formula was in any way harmful for the few months out of their life that they had to drink it. I’m sorry, but if you haven’t been on the other side of this “breast is best and you’re a horrible mother if you don’t breastfeed” crock of baloney, then you should just sit down and stay silent. Because you’re just perpetuating mommy-guilt and mommy-shaming and who does that benefit?
You want a balanced view on this topic? Read “Lactivism” by Courtney Jung.
5
Best advice I got: Trust yourself. Enjoy your baby. If they are crying, don’t take it personally; babies cry, just accept it and be with them. Half the time it’s because they are tired.
5
Thanks for this!
The reality is that the real but modest benefits something like breast feeding provide do not outweigh the reality that many women struggle with it for a variety of reasons. Shame on the medical establishment and society for the undue pressure driven by oversimplification of this [and other issues] you discuss with thoughtfulness.
3
Has this economist gathered data on the effects of breastfeeding on mother baby bonding? Not everything in the world is measurable.
10
Thank you for framing parenting as work.
1
I wish Dr Oster would stop framing data analysis and evidence-based reasoning as some special trick of economists. Most economists I know, including collaborators of Dr Oster’s, have excellent but rather narrow quantitative skills, and most of these skills are standard education in many scientific fields. This is not to disparage the work she is doing (although I know some reproductive scientists disagreed with some of her interpretations of the literature in her other book, and I will be curious what psychologists and human development scientists will think here). This is mostly a plea for economists to back off the horn-tooting a bit. Dr Oster is not the worst: read Ayres & Nalebuff for a painfully self-congratulatory and slow re-discovery of the scientific method, cluster randomized design, and causal inference. But Dr Oster, maybe you can help your profession improve its reputation a bit. The recognition that economists are using basic statistical and scientific approaches might actually improve the flow of ideas into economics and strengthen research. Other fields might learn things too.
1
@Scientist Economists will stop pointing out the difference between causation and correlation when other scientists start recognizing that difference for themselves. Public health is the worst offender in this regard. So many recommendations that come out the organizations supposedly run by trained scientists and doctors are based on observational data with absolutely no indication of causation. I think this has to do with the fact that in the basic sciences, it is feasible to run controlled experiments, and so inference is quite straightforward from a statistical perspective. Scientists then fail to recognize that this is not the case when using observational data. The methods available to deal with this problem, for example, instrumental variables estimators, originated in econometrics departments, not in public health departments.
4
The amount of knowledge and mastery that I feel compelled to have in every aspect of my kids' lives is impossible and overwhelming. When I think of what my parents and my husbands parents understood about the decisions they were making on our behalf I am eternally jealous. I think of me playing in the back of our station wagon with no seatbelt on as we drove, my mom smoking Benson & Hedges out the window. Now we are supposed to hire car sear installation experts! But I also see the effects that my husbands undiagnosed ADHD and learning disabilities have had on his life. Our son has the same disabilities and attending to the doctors appointments, insurance, school meetings, IEP meetings, advocacy, research, and reading over the last 9 years has given me symptoms of PTSD. My husbands parents utter ignorance and trust in systems of authority to know what was best (his fancy British boarding school telling them he was lazy and stupid) essentially meant it was up to my husband to figure it all out when he was and adult. I know the data on what the consequences of doing the same for my son would be. All of this data is informative, but somehow, no matter what the data says, it always lands back on the parents having to do more.
3
@Micaelady Excuse me, I have actual Post-traumatic- stress-disorder from having been repeatedly terrorized and abused by my mentally ill mother when I was a child. I will be on medication for the rest of my life in order to be able to breathe. So please don't use the term PTSD lightly nor as a way to dramatize the self-induced hardships of hyper-parenting.
@Independent
I sympathize with the hardship you experienced in your childhood and wish you healing. I do hope you can step back a see that micaelady is experiencing real distress in her life as she struggles to care for a child with special needs. I am sure that she means no disrespect to anyone suffering severe PTSD but given the tone and palpable anxiety in her comment, can we avoid negating her experience which seems to be approaching a level of stress that is compromising her in a manner that may well be a degree of disordered stress response on a continuum, though well below what many such as yourself suffer. She is stressed and suffering and I do not read it as being dramatizing.
5
@Independent I had twins, one of which was a medically fragile child with a gene mutation who died after 18 months of feeding tubes, seizures, and respiratory infections. The other twin also has special needs- ADHD and learning disabilities. I have spent 9 years navigating the hellish world of the medical and educational horror that is the social-darwinist social support system we have for children in this country. You will find many studies that show that parents of special needs children suffer trauma similar to that of combat veterans. This was a diagnosis I was given by my therapist- not due to the severity of my children's disabilities, but from trying to get them support services. My point is that we, as parents, are slammed with a firehose of information without the proper support systems to navigate it. I believe this article attests to how frightening and stressful all of this information is without knowing what to do with it.
4
Best parenting article ever. Can't believe how many parents (usually moms) are stressed out by the pressure to breast feed/pump, stay home, hold the baby 24/7, and all it does it make everyone frustrated, and in some cases clinically depressed and angry, and you can't have quality time as a family when everyone is fed up. For heaven's sake, there is no one answer for every family, and this is a great affirmation for frustrated parents who are willing to listen. Be flexible. And rational.
4
I think a lot of people are missing the point if this article. Oster isn’t saying you need to base your parenting on studies. She’s saying that much of the advice and recommendations parents receive are really based on little to no evidence.
4
Some of the comments here are frustrating, in that they assume that the author is someone pushing the argument that you need to use data to drive how you parent. She's not doing that.
What the author is doing is recognizing that we have a complete and utter information overload in our parenting era, which has produced tons of anxiety and misinformation, along with a cultural bias that you MUST do something (i.e. breastfeed) or else you are a failure of a parent.
By recognizing that the cat is out of the bag, and parents have access to a ridiculous amount of information - from error-prone studies to the comments from the mommy blogger down the block - the author is trying to get the conversation back to a rational, factual place. She isn't saying you have to do it one way - in fact, she's saying that all those people who say "you have to do it this way" are wrong...and here's the data to prove it.
My therapist - who is a post-partum specialist - always says the right thing when it comes to parenting. She says "if that works for you, great. If it doesn't work, try something else."
It's an incredibly refreshing thing to hear. Because when it comes to bringing up an incredibly complex, unique human being, who comes in one out of an infinite number of possible forms, there IS no one way.
And that's what the author is saying: do what works for you and your child, and no one else.
8
@Phil Edelstein
@drgmpls
Fabulous well written response. This overload of data is wrecking havoc on parenting! When the pendulum swings the other way- these chikdren will follow their intuition and instincts. That is what those qualities are for.
Interesting points but the description of "working" and "at home" parenting states that children of "working" parents do better than those with a parent "who does not work at all." Staying at home to raise children should be seen as a serious decision and at home work is a profession in itself, using many diverse skills.
8
Helping our kids take calculated risks is part of parenting. Calculating the risks is as well. There's nothing wrong with using all the data you can find to help you in what is likely your life's most important project. Look around you at nature. Helicopter parents, all.
1
I breastfed all my babies, not because I really believed in any amazing benefits, but because it seemed so much easier than bottlefeeding. I didn't have to worry about bottle warmers or sterilizing or choosing the right formula, or mixing or any of that stuff. I was also too lazy to do cry it out. My babies ended up good sleeper despite that lapse.
5
Thank you Emily Oster. It is true; reliable and valid results drawn from normal data samples confound. What do we really know? I mean about anything. Never mind something as horrendously complex as child rearing.
The generation of immigrants who live here often marvel at how we were raised by impossibly overwhelmed, impoverished, struggling set of people who regarded running water and indoor plumbing as total luxury, and never thought electricity would be a full time thing. Superstition drove them into the same level of parenting as data is driving me now.
We survived contaminated, amebic water with high levels of lead. Food was mostly spoiling, low on protein. Schools were distant treks, shoes were luxury, no one had text books (till class 3 I had a slate and a chalk). If you were born during harvest, you spent the first few weeks pretty much left on the floor for long periods of time without clothes to be cleaned at the end of the day by completely exhausted people.
Not sure whether my statistics-based understanding of child rearing has produced any better or tougher kids. Our kids live in luxury, and are raised by paranoid, driven parents. Results are comparable to those produced a hundred years ago; statistics has not liberated us at all, they have confounded. I could argue that better parenting data has served equally to better equip them as it has to deskill them and render them self-absorbed.
Thank you for your effort.
1
Well, what could be more controversial that the Mueller report?
Breastfeeding, I guess. I wonder if we'd have this debate if it was men that are breastfeeding. Let moms do what moms do best: decide over their own lives and bodies. Then the rest of us should support those choices, not make them for them.
9
as a pediatrician, I LOVE THIS ARTICLE. too much of parental advice involves virtue posturing, and wishful thinking ( I recently had a mom tell me that she doesn't have to vaccinate her children because she believes in the benefits of breast feeding, as if people hadn't died from the measles before formula was invented!). If there isn't science to prove (or at least suggest something) it is no more than someone's opinion.
10
This is certainly an interesting read, and I do like the author's encouragement for mothers (and all parents) to relax. But she may be missing the point of WHY some of these decisions are difficult. Certainly, the overwhelming amount of contradictory advice doesn't help. But I believe these parenting decisions become stressful because our country provides parents with very little support. There is no paid leave, many mothers have no choice but to return to work within a few months of the birth of their baby. When they do return to work, they are faced with the prospect of incredibly expensive and often sub-par childcare. And so, decisions like breastfeeding and sleeping become fraught, knowing that there isn't a "right" way to do anything given the financial stresses and time constraints of trying to find a balance of work and what may be best for your child.
As a scientist myself, I appreciate the author's embrace of randomized trial experiments. But even more can be learned if we look to other countries and other cultures to learn how to better support families.
7
46 years ago as a young first time mother I was filled with anxiety. I was convinced that my daughter was not developing at a “normal “ rate according to the books I was reading on infants. When I question my wise old Maine pediatrician if her development was normal, he replied “it’s normal for her”. End of discussion. I stopped reading the books and she turned out to be a smart caring young woman and a less anxious mother than me.
3
Thank you for this important piece. When I was a new mom to my second child (and a fourth year medical student), I asked my kids' brilliant pediatrician (who was an uber-respected rockstar at one of the country's finest academic medical centers) "what is the minimum amount of breast-feeding you will accept from my this time around?" His reply remains one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me: "Whatever works for you and your family." I will never forget it. The holistic physical and mental health of the entire family unit is the most important thing for kids.
2
So many of these comments fall into the error of fallacy of composition (thinking what may be true for one part is true for the whole). Yes, many past generations and many individuals today were raised by 'trial & error' or instinct, etc. But that doesn't mean having reasonable data and understanding the difference between correlation and causation won't help parents make better choices. Enjoyable read and probably useful to parents today (mine is grown).
1
I felt sad and frustrated reading this article. Parenting is a beautiful thing that should not be parsed by data, but felt deeply and informed by love. "Crying it out" is a terrible way to start a child's life, and damages the child's sense of security.
Just as important is the effect on parents. Crying is a child's way of communicating a need, and we are hard-wired to respond with empathy and fill that need. Suppressing that instinct damages the parent's sense of empathy toward the child, and I believe that damage lasts.
We raised three daughters with empathy, respect and love, and did not experience the "terrible twos", or even the "teenage terrors" that people loved to warn us about. Children behave as well as they are treated.
8
Agree. Even supposedly enlightened, educated people may push inappropriate advice on young parents. Grandparents are often the worst, interfering with primary attachment bonding with intrusive advice. As much as my in-laws loved their grandkids, there was constant undermining of our primary family attachments. My MIL was the child of an abusive alcoholic married to a functional, 'benign' alcoholic and very emotionally insecure. For us, it meant a lot of stressful interference in everything from nutrition to discipline and continuous boundary violations for us parents and as a couple. There is a lot of love and affection but still a nightmare to manage while raising kids. If grandparents are heavily involved/interfering in parenting and the primary family life, there can be a lot of negative effect because of the ideas and emotional baggage they bring.
Still, today, my kids are all kinds of different, but the same kind of wonderful. One is super independent, not too communicative but making his own decisions, guiding his life and at heart, deeply loving. Another is a great communicator, very perceptive interpersonally and a delight to be around. Another is very comfortable with affection and talking, self-motivated, thoughtful. Life is challenging. Raising kids is a special peak experience that nothing else can compare to. My husband and I feel very fortunate to have each other and our children, whom we love, respect and accept unconditionally.
1
@Virginia Fowler so there were no occasions when a knowing parent who knows what is best for her child tolerates them crying? really?
@Virginia Fowler
I think you mean that this is your experience--not an objective truth.
There is so much pressure on new moms these days. I remember being caught in the "working moms don't love their kids" and "stay at home moms don't use their brains" conflict. After a year of working full time after my first was born I dropped down to part time, thinking I had made a Solomon-like decision to work somewhere in the middle. Ha! I went from being criticized by one camp to being criticized by both! It taught me a valuable lesson: do what works for you and ignore everyone else. Best parenting advice there is.
4
Great piece. I'm a child development researcher and I spend a lot of time with my pediatrician colleagues (who are the main conduit of "official" information to new parents). Our professions often give lots of poorly informed advice. It is sad (at least for me, professionally) to see an economist do it far better.
The three most important takeaways are use common sense for your own situation, be informed by data, and don't feel guilty/anxious about your decisions. The first two are easy, the third can be hard for many.
A note about the linked article regarding sleep training. Increased HPA axis activity (higher cortisol response) is expectable when infants are stressed. Infants also learn, and thus it is expected that they would continue to have a physiologic response to a previously stressful situation (even if they are not overtly distressed/crying). There is nothing inherently bad about lower physiological synchrony between caregiver and baby for a short period of time, nor is there any consequence for caregiver/child attachment (which has been a critique of sleep training). There are great benefits for everybody involved in being well-slept.
5
Data-driven parenting. Oh Lord, just take me now!!! How on earth have mothers managed to successfully rear babies/children since the beginning of time, without "data"!! Have women lost all nurturing instincts? Common sense?
I think both mothers and babies were far better off when the others were younger and not so set in their way. When everyone on the block had babies, we all helped one another in innumerable ways. Experience sharing, even babysitting if one of us had the flu (no vaccinations then!). My strongest women friendships were made when I had babies/young children. Fifty years later, they are still strong. We did not compete with one another, we helped one another! That competitions comes straight from the workplace, no where else.
We've got it all backwards today. Have babies in ones 20's, stay home with them, go back to work when they are in school full-time if that's your choice or necessity. There is still plenty of time for a career but that time for babies is not infinite.
1
@India With all due respect to your experience, a working woman today can’t really do what you did, and what you're suggesting. We can’t just pop back onto the career path after taking months (or years) off. It’s hard enough to not feel out of the loop after going on vacation for a couple weeks. Professional life moves so fast now and there is the need to stay in, to stay relevant. Your generation had one reality, and this is ours.
5
Building a loving, safe, healthy, fun, inquisitive, progressively more independent childhood should be goal, not mastering or analyzing the latest trend (although economists do view life through analysis so I understand this writer’s approach). It does not matter who feeds & cuddles the baby - mom/dad/nanny/grandparent/sibling - just that he/she feels the love of touch, of soothing sounds, of having needs met. I breastfed my babies and pumped milk so dad could bottle feed because it was easy for me not because I was better or more loving. Several friends struggled and were miserable until they let go of expectations and started bottle feeding exclusively. It’s OK to breast feed, OK to bottle feed, most do a combination. It’s OK to work, it’s OK to stop working, its OK to work off & on - most families don’t have a choice.
The one piece of unsolicited advice I give new parents is that its OK to leave a crying baby in the crib or to strap a raging toddler into the car seat and take a break for your own sanity - never hit or shake or scream or deprive. Talk your doctor if things are constantly overwhelming. Be gentle with yourselves and get some sleep.
6
Wise and calm pediatricians are wonderful. We asked ours if we should be giving our toddler fish oil capsules. She asked, "Did you take them when you were kids?" "Umm, No." "Well, you two seem to have turned out fine."
2
I've just had a quite wonderful experience at age 85. One of my beautiful granddaughters flew quite a distance just to visit me and bring her 3-1/2 month old son to get acquainted with great-grandma. Of course I loved every minute. And she's a wonderful mother, of course.
Watching her and baby, and hearing her "scientific" explanation for every nuance of his development made me secretly wonder how in the world I ever raised 2 beautiful children in the mid-50's, successfully I might add, without the benefit of all of this information.
With my first-born at age 22, I returned to full-time work after 3 weeks - no parental leave in those days, but somehow managed by juggling schedules and help from family members. With the birth of my 2nd child I took 3 months off work - what a luxury. In those days we just "did it". And I won't even get started with car seats and blanket binding the arms.
One wonders how those children of the 20's and 30's made it into being identified as "the greatest generation".
Ahh! Progress.
5
Why didn't our parents generation rely on smartly researched info like this? Because they didn't need it- Back then Moms were comfortable in knowing that much of new parenting is "winging it". What is good for your cousin's child is not necessarily going to work for yours'. They were comfortable with the best piece of advice given to me by a member of that generation..... "You cant break a baby" (figuratively, of course). Each child is different, lots of trial and error is needed for each one. Letting certain children (at the appropriate age) cry thru the night is not going to cause them a life on a psychologists couch or hating their parents.
Research-based parenting is another manifestation of the internet generation, that Doctor Google has the answer for everything in life.
6
@megachulo No, it’s not. There were fewer data-driven studies back then, it’s not that everyone ignored the ones that did exist. It’s always better to have research based on data analysis, including for informing parenting decisions, but also for climate-change, the effect of x-rays, the efficacy of drugs, the effect of jail on recidivism, race/sex discrimination, and many more issues that require decisions. It’s also always better to consider the quality of the data and analysis, as Oster points out. She even does some of the quality consideration for us and explains it carefully and clearly. Bravo, Professor Oster!
3
This is the most amazing article! As the mom of two happy, healthy kids, I needed a reminder to stop trying to perfect their upbringing, and just enjoy it a bit :)
6
I’m not sure what to think about these comments. My generation was mainly formula-fed ( in my family—born 1946-1960). None of us (5 kids) had allergies, asthma, ear infections, etc. We all have above average intelligence. We are all thin. We were all independent from a young age, because my mother threw us out of the house to play with other kids. We used our imaginations, and Ican’t remember ever being bored. When I was growing up, I never knew a kid with asthma, peanut allergies, or diabetes. Overweight kids were rare. Most of all I felt loved, and my family remains close today.
18
Thank you for this great article! I’m an adoptive mom to two boys who were not breastfed and guess what—they are healthy, handsome, athletic, intelligent and both attend the top private school in our large urban city. Parental affluence and education played much larger roles in their success (ie reading and speaking to them often as infants and toddlers, attending great preschools, etc) than any extra benefit from breastfeeding. I hope this encourages mothers who are feeling guilt about all the unnecessary demands and fear we now place on women to breastfeed for a year at any and all costs.
11
Thank you for a wonderful humane piece that puts things in perspective. Parenting is oftentimes a fraught business sometimes made more so by other fraught parents. Also thanks for sharing unexpected insights such as the evidence base for a link between breast-feeding and breast cancer in particular.
4
I loved this. Thank you. I’m old now, my twins are 32, but I well remember all the guilt, and stress of making decisions on what to do and when.
3
And data has its limitations..... I breast fed my son while he went from one ear infection to another..... i breastfed my daughter who had no ear infections.....
Colic can be treated. It is usually reflux and there is medicine for that. My children all had "colic" before anything was known about reflux, but luckily for me doctors at that time gave medicine to calm their digestive systems before feeding. It was a drug and people now would say it might make them become drug addicts but time hasn't borne that out. I had "colic," my children had "colic." My grandchildren had reflux and got medicine for that, although at first the doctor was reluctant to diagnose it. He told my daughter-in-law that "babies cry." I told her that no, babies don't just cry. If they cry there is a reason. At first we didn't understand that bouncing them made it worse, so we bounced them. A little knowledge can mean a great deal! I tried letting my first child cry herself to sleep once but couldn't stand to think of that tiny baby, all alone in the crib crying. So, I never let my children cry themselves to sleep. That didn't mean that I gave in to their every whim and they didn't end up spoiled. They grew up to be sensitive and caring adults.
3
This article made me sad, and although my kids haven't been babies in 21, 18, and 14 years, I remember breastfeeding them not for the supposed benefits, but for the connection it gave us. I was fortunate enough to stay home with all 3 and could nurse them through their first year, and that was a very conscious choice. I wouldn't shame another mother for formula feeding, but those days of nursing were, for me, profound. And each of us should only speak for ourselves anyway -- parenting can't be reduced to numbers and can't be learned by a book -- it's about your family, your history, your background, your choices. As long as children are cared for and loved, they will make their way just fine.
23
@MountainFamily There are many and varied reasons that some babies are not breastfed. These include, to name but a few, tiny little babies who lack the energy to suck, babies who are tongue-tied, babies who never learn to latch on, babies who are in the NICU, mothers who suffer birth trauma, mothers who suffer childbirth injuries, inverted nipples, post-partum depression, and mothers who must return to work within 2-4 weeks. I do agree that each of us should speak for ouselves only. Treat new mothers with kindness, please.
Lovely and much needed. One criticism though. Present the data as Number Needed to Treat (NNT) - it is much easier to understand. For example 9% vs 13% diarrhea is a 4% difference so the NNT (the number of moms who do not breastfeed who would need to start to avoid one case of diarrhea) is 25. For breast cancer it is 12% (the lifetime risk of developing breast cancer) x 30% = 3.6% or about. And the death rate is about 10% so the NNT to avoid one death is 250.
5
Thank you for putting perspective on the alleged benefits of breastfeeding over formula. As a society we should be celebrating the fact that we live in a time and place where there is an alternative to breastmilk that is widely available and leads to similar health outcomes for babies. Instead American women are experiencing at all-time high of pressure to breastfeed. Why? The whole 'natural mothering' movement does seem to be the backlash of the political left against women's liberation.
11
Spz,
I sympathize with being a first time mother and all that that entails. As a scientist, however, I feel compelled to point out that the benefits of breastfeeding are not “alleged.” This author’s article does a disservice to the scientific community and all of the research performed on the benefits of breastfeeding. See article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks&id=23178059 . The most striking and significant difference is that your breast milk has actual living cells (immune) in it for your baby. This has an impact body wide. There are numerous health benefits and differences. We are learning everyday about the continual benefits of breast milk over formula. A recent study pointed out how breast fed babies have healthier oral microbiomes and receive a boost to their innate immune systems. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108105942.htm).
As women, mothers, I believe what we need to be doing is advocating (dare I say demand) better support (linger paid maternity leave, in home breast feeding suppers, etc...) for women in America. Many woman want to continue to breast feed but due to the lack of support, stop. It is criminal how mothers and babies are treated in this country. It needs to change.
33
Much may be learned by new parents when listening to other experiences, reading books or observing statistics. But then, maybe not. My friend chose another route. She studied how orangutan mothers reacted to the needs of their babies and adopted many of their responses, including picking up and reassuring him when he cried. The result: That baby is now 17, has a genius IQ, is independent, self-assured, cares about and for others, and is well-grounded. They were not helicopter parents. They had minimum wage jobs. They were raising an older sibling with Asperger's. Their parenting life was beyond difficult but this was the path they chose. Their story is unique to them. Babies are not objects to be counted and used for statistics, only one more way, among others, that parents are encouraged to give way to information that feeds more anxiety and guilt. Each baby is unique and hopefully treated that way. Find other parents you admire and surround yourselves with their empathy and support.
7
Like Oster, I was very curious about "the data" when I was pregnant and wanted to make "evidence-based" choices. I read countless scientific journal articles about gestational diabetes and obstetrical practices. After an emergency c-section, my desire to seek data to inform my decisions waned considerably. I have found so much peace as a mother by simply following the baby's lead. Maybe the joy and challenge of parenting lies in the fact that the data, if it even exists, will never provide meaningful answers. Let's give new parents support (i.e. more time with their babies) rather than evidence-based advice.
8
@Louise
Data can provide meaningful answers on policy decisions, though, for societal benefit. Such as maternity leave.
The distinction between data and the individual family is the same as that between statistics vs anecdote. It’s subtle for many. But the point is, general probabilities are certainly helpful and relevant, but only in a limited way, for each individual scenario.
2
Stop looking for answers from experts. Mothering is mostly instinct. Just follow what the doc recommends in the way of shots and then relax. Breast milk has carcinogens etc. in it because of the air we breathe and the food we eat. In the end the kid will grow up OK in spite of parental angst. Our kids never had ear infections etc. I think just due to DNA so stop blaming parents for everything your kid develops or not.
Older teens and the plethora of anxiety and suicides are more worrisome--save your energy for those years.
7
It really doesn't require a scientific analysis to know that mother's milk is the best thing for young mammals, including humankind. But there's very little support for nursing in America for working mothers, and I'm speaking more of the average female worker in the bottom 95%, not MBAs or other professionals who usually have some clout in the workplace. Too bad the so-called "evangelicals" don't vociferously support making this natural form of feeding/bonding that virtually every mother and child on earth experienced during the time of Christ easier to accomplish today, twenty centuries later.
11
This article makes me sad. I hope it's only a few data loving geeks who have to make natural processes so fraught with doubt and anxiety. Maybe this speaks to the state of our American society: motherhood is supposedly "revered", but definitely not supported.
8
I loved “Expecting Better” and I can’t for her new book. For me having a second child has revealed the fallacy in thinking that my parenting choices have as much impact as I might have thought (or hoped) they do. Our first child, for example, never liked snacks — never had tantrums — and would run into traffic if we let him. Our second child wants to eat all of the time, has regular meltdowns, and can mostly be trusted to follow instructions about her safety. In other words, they have the same parents and have been raised with similar parenting strategies but they are remarkably different in numerous ways. That realization has taken some of the pressure off of my husband and me to parent (there’s that verb our parents probably never used once!) perfectly. What a relief.
54
Wise words. Isn’t it amazing how different children can be? This is the greatest parenting challenge - let them be who they were meant to be.
20
@LM Amen. Temperament plays a big role in how children behave and develop and there is often little credit/blame for parents to take.
22
@LM, can't agree enough! I discovered pretty quickly how individual my children were. I followed their lead and let them be who they were within reason and safety concerns. They are adults with their own children now and they turned out great!
7
Good article. My only comment is that Nature typically sets up things to benefit the species. Humans are mammals. Mammals feed their young through lactation. There must be significant benefit to this set-up or it wouldn't exist. Trying to measure "benefits" through the gold standard, double-blinded research is impossible. I would trust Mother Nature on this one.
21
Absent the ability to feed a baby with formula, all mammals, including humans, would nurse their infants, having no other choice. Other mammals, with human support, have been raised on formula, not just humans. Your comment comment does not address the reasons or the efficacy of bottle feeding, and therefore doesn’t prove that breastfeeding is best.
4
@BA I see where you’re coming from. I usually like to think this way also, but it’s hard when Nature interacts with stuff made by humans. For example, Nature set us up to be able to absorb as many calories from all our food intake, which makes sense if we are mammals trying to stay alive in the wild. But not so if you think that fast-food and other easily high-caloric food is readily available. Some people should not eat as much as they want every time they feel their bodies asking for it. The same with breast-feeding; one needs to consider the alternative. Given the demands for moms in this world, and the fact that we have baby formula (I’m not saying that it is perfect, but it is better than nothing for certain), it makes sense that at least for some families the “right” choice would be not to breast-feed.
2
@BA That's nice, as long as you are are able to breastfeed. I wasn't, and was immediately shamed for it. My mother than informed me that she had not been able to either - nor had her mother and many of her relatives, or my paternal grandmother either.
Our family, on both sides, are tall, thin, athletic, very highly educated (doctors, lawyers and engineers going back four and five generations) and consistently score in the top percentiles of standardized tests. If we had all "trusted Mother Nature," none of us would have survived to adulthood.
I gritted my teeth and survived the nasty looks and comments from strangers and so-called "friends" as I bought formula in the grocery store and bottle-fed my son in public. He never suffered from any of the problems or illnesses "linked" with failure to breastfeed. He is now heading for college with a large scholarship after breezing through multiple honors and AP courses and scoring in the 99th percentile on the SAT's. I doubt that an extra IQ point or two would have made a difference. Obviously, however, I still resent the glorification of breastfeeding and the punitive treatment I received, and I do my best to let others know that lactation is not equal to sainthood.
24
The author’s interpretation of the sleep training study that “gets a lot of play” is biased. The study showed that (unsurprisingly) the parents’ and babies’ cortisol (stress hormone) levels were elevated while babies were left to cry themselves to sleep. Once babies started falling asleep without crying, the babies’ cortisol levels remained elevated at bedtime but the parents’ cortisol levels returned to normal. So, babies remained stressed at bedtime despite being successfully “trained” and parents lost emotional synchrony with their children.
“Sleep training” was first invented in the late 1800s and has had multiple reiterations by persons looking to profit from selling their advice to ignore one’s parental instincts and train oneself not to respond to baby’s crying. One popular sleep training book states that it’s ok to let a baby cry at bedtime until she vomits.... and still do nothing to console the baby after she’s vomited. I do agree that our work obsessed, income-driven, culture, that is particularly unforgiving toward new parents and babies, does unfortunately force many families to turn to sleep training. Insomnia is a pervasive problem in our society which probably has roots in childhood. We certainly do not have enough data to assuredly state that sleep training does not cause any negative long term consequences.
15
@CB oh wow - "lost emotional synchrony with their children." something else to shame parents/feel guilty about!! Good grief - enough already!
Parents should do what they think is the best for their child. I'd also like to state that articles like this rarely take into account the experiences of women of color. I'm a African-American and was a older mother in my early 30's when my first child was born. I resented the fact that it was assumed that I would bottle feed, even though I informed everyone I would not, and the hard sell of baby formula was insulting to me. As a professional costume designer, I breastfed my two children. I was in the fortunate position where I could bring my children (born six years apart) to the theater with me and had incredibly supportive directors and colleagues, along with a wonderful assistant who helped carry the load. My children were satisfied, happy, and docile and we had very few instances of a crying baby causing a disruption. Both also slept through the night throughout infancy. This was 30 years ago and I just assumed this was what you did at the time. Now seeing the struggle of new mothers working in the theater, I realize how fortunate and brave I was. I would breastfeed anywhere, including production meetings, while fully covered. This is not the case now days in 2019 as young professional women in the theater are advocating for more support for working mothers.
17
@CojettHow things change! Fifty two years ago in the Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia I gave birth to my first child. Being newly arrived from England, where breast feeding was the norm, I naturally expected to feed my son. I was told in no uncertain terms that “only colored people used the breast.” I persisted, hard for a 22 year old in a foreign country, and met with scorn. Picture the reaction when I cancelled the circumcision appointment!
All this to point out the twisting turning nature of racism. Shame.
2
The author is using different standards of evidence for each questions. She required strong evidence to support breast feeding, but she is ok with only limited evidence for sleep training. In any case, consensus in the medical sciences is better advice than an economist selecting few empirical studies without an understanding of developmental psychology, nutrition issues, etc.
10
Whatever one concludes about any given parental techniques, any child is lucky who has a parent determined to find the best strategies for their well-being.
18
Great article. Multivariate analysis > univariate analysis. We should apply the same lens to the issue of the workplace, where too much has been made of pay and gender/race because of univariate studies.
Using data in the decisions one makes in caring for a baby ... really? Babies are emotional, feeling and reactive beings. They are need of constant care and someone who understands their needs as they are - not what is listed in some distant, data-driven report that has nothing to do with their moment by moment evolutionary needs. It is too bad that parents find solace in a scientist's opinion about what is right for their personal situation in caring for a baby. We are asking too much of these babies - and yes, asking too much of parents who juggle too much work, and too much societal pressure to keep up. I wish we could stop trying to force change on the little ones and focus instead on the societal and workplace changes that need to occur to afford the options for parents to be more attentive in the early years. Tune in to the baby and your own feelings and use that data to govern your actions first and foremost. I raised two children based on our needs and circumstances - and each child was very different - and it wasn't magic, it was hard (raising children is hard!) but I have no regrets and have two responsive, balanced, independent and loving young adult children as a result.
16
@Elizabeth Yes! And thank you. You need to write the next op ed on parenting. Most of these "how to parent" articles are getting tedious.
Since we don't even know what all is in human milk, I can't imagine that a man made substitute could possibly be just as good for growing a human infant. Ideally, our society would have all the supports in place to assist mothers with breastfeeding at the breast including knowledgeable doctors, nurses, hospitals, peer helpers and work place policies. No one has mentioned the use of banked human milk for those mothers who even with support are unable to breastfeed or pump. Nor mentioned the use of wet nurses. Human milk for human babies!
11
Anyone who has raised their children through infancy, toddlerhood, adolescence, and teen years, will tell you that all the stress over breastfeeding, making your own foods, etc., is meaningless. What happens before school age is almost completely irrelevant. The family, school, societal, and environment forces that come as the child grows will completely overwhelm anything that happens before age 5. My wife nearly died of stress trying to get our children to breast-feed, in retrospect neither one of us can believe that she put herself through that. Treat your kids with kindness, read to them, challenge them to do well, and make sure they are safe along the way. Everything else is someone trying to sell you something.
27
@Frederick
What happens to children in their first five years has an irrevocable impact on the rest of their lives.
This article and the responses seem to indicate that anything that gets in the way of the corporate machine is ridiculous.
Skip the kids--go to work and be happy-- have more money, more vacations and larger homes. Don't bother with tiny beings who require all your attention when they're small. Get a cat.
3
I suspect that any evidence for stronger friendships among nursing moms is because one of the key factors in successful nursing is having a great and knowledgeable support system. It isn't that nursing at brunch strengthens your friendships--it's that friends who will help you latch your baby at brunch strengthen nursing. And on the flip side, having that kind of support can strengthen friendships. Being literally forced into a closet is never going to be a plus in the relationship category.
4
Great commentary! As long as we're touting parenting decisions that might actually be beneficial for parents vs. their kids, women staying in the workforce after they have children is better for Mom's financial health, and working out of the home has little to no impact on her children's ability to thrive.
People have accidents and become disabled. One spouse can die unexpectedly. And, of course, many marriages end in divorce. It's really important for women to be able to support themselves and their children, should the unthinkable happen.
I can't tell you how many stories I've heard in my peer group where a woman who opted to be an SAHM and has been out of the workforce for 20 years, suddenly finds herself at the age of 50 on the wrong end of her husband's divorce papers. They can't find a job to save their lives because their skills are horribly out of date. Even if she's got a great lawyer and gets a generous settlement, who wants to be financially dependent on someone who doesn't want you in their life anymore? It's psychologically damaging, and prevents her from moving on with her life.
In the end, let's all stop caving to the perfect mommy propaganda. Because that's exactly what it is: propaganda.
24
All the data in the world can't convince me that letting a baby cry herself to sleep is a good idea.
Crying is an infant's way of calling for comfort because of hunger, pain or need of a change.
It is not humane to simply ignore the cries.
Next time your adult partner asks you for help, try "shushing" them...
..and check out the data on divorce.
40
@Ed this is the exact point of the article- and spoken like someone who either didn’t have kids or didn’t have a kid they had to sleep train. Read the *evidence* not your “gut instinct”- which is literally the downfall of this country.
I *had* to sleep train. I always envisioned myself a crunchy hippy mom who would *never* let my baby’s cry. And yet, when my baby was six months old I was hallucinating from lack of sleep and working full time. My baby had, over the course of several months, started sleeping in shorter and shorter spurts and cry whenever he woke up without a boob in his mouth. Eventually, he was up every 35-45 minutes, all. Night. Long. I did that for a month and a half. I couldn’t co sleep because I couldn’t sleep with him on my boob, and he wouldn’t still cry whenever it fell out. I wasn’t fantasizing about suicide. And you dare judge me for sleep training, based on evidence, at a developmentally appropriate age (6months)? I went crib side and comforted him when he cried for two weeks (but didn’t give him the boob) and after a week he started only crying twice at night, which I judged to be hunger and kept feeding him. He was loved and cherished always. We both sleep just fine one night now, one or two night wakings to eat. We are BOTH healthier and happier. Your judgement is the authors exact point.
6
Interesting discussion, but I came away saddened that at a wedding venue the only option to breastfeed was in a hot closet? Weddings celebrate family life, but yet the resulting 'family' has to eat in a tiny, hot, dark room. Seriously?
31
A study I’d like to see is one that looks at breastfeeding success and mom’s upper body strength. Of course there will be many factors that influence breast feeding, but I can’t help but think that moms who can easily wrangle the kid into whatever awkward position works best for them will be at an advantage over moms who must build a pillow fort to keep the baby in place.
1
Thanks for this reality check. I breastfed my son until he was five. The reason? He developed asthma ( so much for the studies) as a toddler. During an attack, he didn’t want to drink or eat. But breastfeeding was a comfort to him, and it seemed to help him breathe better. This kept him out of the hospital where many asthmatic children are admitted for dehydration. This is anecdotal, but it worked for me and my son.
12
The debate about how to best nourish infants is so much more complex than the breast milk versus formula debate and probably no studies from the past reflect the current situation where babies are being fed a steady stream of chemicals from plastics, pesticides and other toxins. The question now is does breast milk or formula have more of these and how do we reduce them in whatever method we choose for feeding infants, In terms of formula, the formula itself can be contaminated as well as the water used to make it. In terms of breastmilk, the mother's exposures to toxins through diet, water, air etc are all passed on through breast milk. This is the world we live in now. Thank you capitalism and corporate greed. We are raising a new generation of chronically ill children (currently 1 in 2 children have a chronic health condition) and it starts in infancy. Actually it starts prenatally. We can make the best, most informed choices, but as individual parents we cannot transform the environment our children are growing up in.
8
Great article! Finally someone who gets causality in a newspaper article and who has a proper understanding of chances. And finally someone who thinks independently and does not use science as religion.
7
Breastfeeding success can vary depending on the child, ask any mother with multiple births who had tried to do this. The main reason traditionally is it is the handiest, cheapest and best way to feed your child anywhere, anytime. It also provides the newborns with a boost to their immune systems. Best of all, it gives you a chance to bond with your own child in a way that no one else ever can, and this is very special time that you will never have again for the rest of your lives. It isn't always easy, can be very tiring if you have several children, but giving mothers maternity leave will give them time to do this and to rest.
15
Finally , after the dinner, the baths, the reading and nursing, the 2.5 year old and 9 month old asleep, my daughter and I had some time together where we hugged and cried and I told her....it's just really hard. My mother (family of 12) acted like it was just so rosy. Now I always stop to talk to moms and dads with babies and let them know how wonderful they are. It's one of life's greatest spiritual connections you'll ever have. Babies, children...can we just love them too much. And, new mothers....just a big thumbs up. I wish it was easier for you.
17
Did I miss something in the discussion of breastfeeding?
In a piece written by an economist, I would have expected some mention of the fact that if there are a minimum of logistical impediments, breastfeeding is cheaper and easier than bottle feeding.
My kids are all in their 30s now but I breastfed them because there was no way I was going to go through all the nonsense required for bottle feeding back then.
23
@spartanmom
Breastfeeding is not “cheaper and easier” for everyone. Time is also valuable which significantly changes the “cost” of breastfeeding for many.
And as she noted in the article, breastfeeding can also be significantly harder. Obviously individuals vary but for MANY breastfeeding is more expensive and harder which is why the accurate costs and benefits are so important.
3
@spartanmom
No. It's not necessarily "cheaper and easier". Did you have to go back to work at 12 weeks postpartum? Did one of those precious offspring have a tongue tie or struggled to latch? Drop off their weight/growth curve?
I bet in the moment your postpartum experience was light years different that what you remember now.
3
I also enjoyed Expecting Better and always appreciate Emily Oster’s perspectives on these topics. As a parent, we are bombarded with information and direction with the ultimate strive for perfection. We are all just doing our best. Given recent news regarding helicopter and snow plowing parents, it will be interesting to see the research and outcomes that result from this “perfect” parenting. As I reflect, points of struggle have been the biggest learning and life-skill forming opportunities, of course in the context of basic needs always being met - food, shelter, being loved. Our real task is raising independent and community contributing adults, and there are many paths for achieving that goal including potential flawed steps along the way that we as a family - parent and child - learn and from which grow together.
4
There is ONE parenting practice that is tied to much better outcomes for whole societies.... but nobody talks about it. CARRYING you baby. Carrying (and the jouncing around that happens when a baby is worn on the body of a moving adult) helps a baby's brain develop properly. This has been known since the 1970s from the work of James W Prescott of the NIH.
The stimulation of carrying has a lot of effects on brain development, because the brain system that is most developed at birth is the part related to movement.
26
@Megan Yes I carried my child all the time. I never used an infant carrier for him. it struck me as dangerous and, frankly, difficult compared to carrying a baby who hangs on to you and sits on your hip nicely. I didn't walk into the house and dump him into a baby seat, I sat with him snuggled next to me on the sofa while I read the newspaper or whatever. Babies need to be close.
2
I completely agree with the author’s advocacy for data driven decisions. My wife and I took similar refuge in actual science. However, I object to the gendered assumptions in this article.
The author makes occasional reference to “parents,” and maybe dads (did she even?) but in depth she frames all these decisions as maternal (well, breastfeeding really is but other than that...). This assumption of primary responsibility was likely her experience and remains the norm in most families. Its an unproductive assumption, though I doubt the author meant to do this. I doubt it because as a stay-at-home dad I encounter it all the time from otherwise perfectly nice moms: I’m excluded from invitations by the “class moms” at my daughter’s school even though I am listed as the primary contact. I was not invited to the village’s parental support group because of my gender. Me and my daughter don’t get asked on as many play-dates (maybe that’s me not my gender, idk. I’d be curious about the statistics on that). I get bewildered questions like, “so, do you cook?” These moms are all very nice, don’t get me wrong. The husbands of these moms are extra chummy with me when they see me but my wife would have more in common with their experience than I, frankly.
Look, I (we dads) work around these things. I also recognize that stay-at-home dadness continues to be a transgressive career choice. No problem. I get it. Still...pushing for a little reflection here.
74
@Aaron, yes, she does mention daddies. Take a second look. She attempted to be balanced.
1
@AaronI love your post. Thank you for reminding people of the way gender assumptions can also diminish men. Hilarious: do you cook? Well, yeah, how could you not? The problem is that TV has shown us a generation of bumbling dads, and keeps presenting this as endearing and cute. It is not!
5
@Northstar5 Cooking is something most adults should do to feed themselves and others , including any child over 6 months old. (Older babies can eat soup, mashed potatoes, rice, and probably several other things.)
Parents should just relax and do what is most comfortable for them. If they are happy, the child will be happy. Parents need sleep, therefore sleep training is important and will not hurt the child, just the opposite (better rest for all after initial protesting). Breast feeding is great for both mother and child, but an occasional bottle of mother's milk or formula (I made my own from cow's milk) will diffuse any problem. Early toilet training (before stubborn refusal setting in about 12 months) is practiced in many cultures and prevents future fights, is better for environment and socialization (no big kids running around with full diapers). Unfortunately this common sense advice is now routinely ignored by modern parents.
4
Well thought out and practical advice.
So many moms go through guilty feelings. I felt guilty about breast feeding and working but everything has turned out fine with my son. It's good to have data but we have to make decisions to suit our circumstances and needs.
6
Each child and mother are unique, the situation evolves and there is no one size fits all for everyone. Listen to your heart and trust your instincts. It does help to learn from others experiences so here is mine.
My son was "high need" wanting to be held constantly (we used a sling) and refusing to bottle feed breastmilk (didn't even try formula). I breastfeed because I wanted to, he wanted to and, because we were able to live on my husband's income alone, I could.
I slept with him in his room for the first year in a queen bed. He used his crib for naps. This allowed all 3 of us to sleep better. I could just roll to my side in the night when he needed to nurse and my husband could sleep undisturbed in the next room. Eventually we developed a family bed. Because he was so attached, I could not leave him at mother's day out because he would cry until I returned and they asked me not to. Any time away from him would have to coincide with his next feeding so babysitting was limited.
As he grew more independent, we were able to find a good woman with 2 other children to come to our house for half a day while I went back to work part time. I needed this time away to be in the adult world again. Motherhood can be very isolating, especially if you have no other family to help.
My son and his father and I continue a very close and loving relationship. I would not trade that special time I spent with him for the world.
5
Women breast fed for thousands of years, and there were no studies about it. Breast feeding is the natural order of things. It is beneficial to both mom and baby. Skin to skin contact is valuable to both, and important to the child's feeling of security. It is bonding in a way that artificial methods are not. Certainly, there are exceptions, such as a baby who spends a lengthy time in the NICU or medical issues in either the mother or the baby, but this close, early contact is important for the well-being of both baby and mom. I work with babies and children, and I am surprised to find that few moms breast feed anymore. In my view, both are losing out on a wonderful, close time with each other. Do 'studies' measure that? IQ is not a measure for these things.
32
@TenToes I was breastfed growing up but my younger sister was not. The only difference between us is personality and height. I am my mom's height and my sister is my dad's height.
6
@TenToes Or lack of sleep while the mother is recovering from giving birth and mastitis and cracked nipples can drive a mother into post partum depression. It’s comments like this that are unhelpful. Remember, for thousands of years the infant mortality rate was abysmal and frankly, formula is a modern miracle that help many children survive into healthy adulthood.
Every new mother should read the common sense recommendations of the Fed is Best campaign instead of believing the hokum of the Breast and Best activists, whose strict recommendations send a ton of babies into the NICU for dehydration, jaundice, and even seizures every year.
I see all these moms on social media desperately asking for lactation help, swearing they will never use the “evil” formula but asking why their babies cried all the time and were not meeting growth targets. It was painful to read because all those strangers would comment back unhelpful suggestions (e.g. up your milk production with illegal drugs from Canada) instead of saying something with common sense like get a scale to weigh the baby before and after feeding. If there aren’t enough ounces gained, then you don’t have enough breastmilk and need to supplement with formula.
8
My wife and I had quite animated, ahem, "discussions" about whether or not we should sleep train our children. Both sides (me, for; her, against) could find ample books, websites, doctors and even other parents to support our respective position. (Alas, neither of us are clinically trained to assess the quality of data we were given...).
We did not adopt a rigorous sleep training schedule. In the end, we got through it.
In retrospect, one thing I will advise parents is that most couples really only have a few hours of potential "together-time" in the day - and those hours likely fall in the evening, after the baby should be put down to bed. Don't forget together time is important to being healthy parents too.
15
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
As a working mom who had trouble breastfeeding and did sleep training out of necessity, I still look at my two fabulous teenagers and question whether they would be even more fabulous if I had done things differently.
This is such a welcome perspective.
32
@Riley2 Maybe they would have. Does it matter. We just have to let go of the idea that we will raise perfect kids.
The fact that many women in today’s day and age have the education, time, and resources to spend countless hours “researching” and agonizing over whether it’s OK to bail on breast feeding at 10 months instead of knocking themselves out to do it the magic 365 days (366 if it’s a leap year?) puts them and their children ahead of 99.99 percent of the people who have ever lived.
People used to worry about cholera, now we agonize over hair splitting like whether to serve peas or carrots first.
It’s like they say about disputes in academia, the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small.
54
From the Middlemiss study: All infants exhibited behavioral distress on the first day...On the first day of the sleep training program, all infants engaged in 2 or more bouts of crying. In contrast, by the third day of the program, all infants settled to sleep independently without a bout of distress...also, the fussing was less intense as well as shorter than the bouts of distress on the first day...Overall, outward displays of internal distress were extinguished by sleep training”.
3
This is an article I'd pass along to parents or parents=to-be.
I don't think that the issue (at least not the only issue) is that first time parents think that "working harder" will always get the results they want.
I suspect it is because we have developed this idea that there is a way to identify and get the best -- the best shoes, the best cars, the best neighborhoods, the best baby strollers - - and so then, a way to raise the best child. Just do your research, and voila, the Consumer Report top pick will be obvious. Combine that outlook with a need to be seen as better than average - and then the decisions aren't just about good enough child care but ego care.
On top of everything,with the internet, the sources of information abound. Too much input can be paralyzing instead of helpful. You want to be knowledgeable; it is not necessary - and utterly impossible - to be know every approach.
Most choices that caring people make in nurturing their children do not have dire consequences. Many roads . . .
6
I've really enjoyed reading Emily Oster's book Expecting Better throughout my pregnancy, and as I enter the homestretch of my first pregnancy, I find this article really useful.
At the end of the day, we all want to do what is best for our babies and our family. My biggest takeaway from Oster's work: no matter what you decide to do about feeding your baby/ teaching your baby to sleep and self-soothe/ make a decision about how much and when to go back to work (if you're fortunate enough to have that flexibility), there are a million different ways to do it, and someone else will probably think you should be doing it differently. The goal isn't to be the perfect parent, whatever that means; the goal is to do what's best for you and your baby. There are many right ways to be a good parent.
16
Congratulations and best of luck!
The best parenting advice I ever recorded was: “good enough is good enough.”
It has become a mantra for me when confronted by well-meaning grandmas, competition parents, and phone calls to school.
27
My only advice to parents-to-be is to keep a journal (a smart phone and it’s features are woefully insufficient). Diligently record your child’s milestones and your feelings, triumphs, and disappointments.
I think ALL other proffered advice is incredibly presumptuous on the part of the advice-giver.
3
@Human “good enough” was my mantra too - I did an undergrad in developmental psych many years before becoming pregnant, and the idea of “good enough parenting” stuck with me from those classes even though I took a very different career path. There are many ways to raise a happy, secure child and none of us have to meet some specific standard of perfection to get there.
4
This is all very scientific and heady. In the progressive cutting edge world of pre- and peri-natal psychology, much more emphasis is put on the quality of relating. The author's vision of how breast-feeding would go doesn't seem to include the emotional-physical pleasure of mutual bonding. Is the mother fully present with the baby while nursing? Or while bottle feeding? I'd wager that's a far greater determinant of outcomes. Secure attachment is at the heart of it, and that is directly connected to attuned eye contact (not too much, but often enough) and skin-to-skin pleasure.
13
I hope the book goes beyond average effects to talk about heterogeneity. Given the scant evidence on many of these topics, I doubt it does/can. The reality is that all babies are different. I didn’t trust the sleep training research when my son was young for this reason. Even if on average babies aren’t harmed, some might be. And Ferber himself laments that his method - meant for babies with sleep disorders - went mainstream. I think it’s too early and the trials are too small to give parents a definitive answer on this question and many others. I appreciate that Oster is trying to ease guilt but the truth isn’t clear cut yet on many of these issues.
2
With widely varying cultural practices, it must be assumed that there is a mechanism in all babies that allows them to respond to parenting practices such that they (the babies) will develop optimally.
6
My own mother was horrified when I breastfed but I did so for almost a year which was also my last year in law school. I’d had an emergency csection and felt too awful to read the hospital’s brochure that said you might feel too awful to breast feed immediately. So I just did it. My child had asthma and eczema and ear infections anyway.
Work. I’m a grandma now but I didn’t work full time for 12 years. I have never understood why people who are never home have kids. I can understand when one person works fewer hours. I can understand when people have 40 hour a week jobs. I can understand if both work part time but I just can’t get my head wrapped around the idea of no one ever being at home. Kids probably turn out ok but what does it say about parents?
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@Retiree Lady
It says the mother has a life of her own. I’ve never understood women (because, seriously, how often is it the man staying home) who feel they need to be with their kids every waking hour. Once they start school this is even more ridiculous. The opportunity costs of staying home for the woman is in the millions, over a lifetime, and it’s not just economic, it’s social too. Further, staying at home teaches the children all the wrong lessons: dependence, a view that mommy’s job is them, etc. Obviously the most privileged classes of women have not dedicated themselves to playing nursemaid - that alone should answer the question. Cheers!
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@Retiree Lady
It usually says that the parents can't afford not to work two jobs. I was lucky enough to be able to work part-time during my kids' preschool and school years, but I have many, many friends that cannot afford to pay for basics like housing, food, and medical insurance/expenses without both parents working full-time. This is a well-known problem in our society. In the 1970's and earlier, most families could live a comfortable middle-class existence with one parent working full-time, and one staying home with the kids. That ended, sadly, about the time of the first big recessions in the early 80's, and has never changed. In this era of contract work and "gig" economies, I wonder how younger people will ever be able to afford to raise families.
4
@Retiree Lady, I was born in 1948. My mother went back to fulltime work at the Red Cross when I was six weeks old. I spent my days with a neighbor who had two teenage daughters. The girls taught me to whistle before I had any teeth. When my brother was born three years later Mother switched to a part time job supervising volunteers over the phone from home. (I learned professional receptionist skills then.) When I was in fourth grade she spent a year subbing for the Red Cross director of disaster relief and life was so much more pleasant. The next fall my brother and I implored her to go back to work. Which she did. It took me a number of years to realize that Daddy was almost certainly cheering us on. Back then we were latchkey kids but that didn't mean that no one was ever home. We had plenty of time with parents on evenings and weekends. We had breakfast with Mother and cooked dinner with Daddy many nights.
Great article. And the author didn't even tackle the question of whether it's "ok" to mitigate unbearable pain during childbirth. (Ugh, don't get me started.) Anyway, you do find with most of these decisions that my grandmother was right when she advised my mother, who was worried about my brother giving up the bottle: "When he walks down the aisle, he won't have a bottle in his mouth." Yes, it was very heteronormative, but you get the idea.
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This is a great article, but it cites only a meta-study about childhood outcomes for working or non-working parents, skipping the important new work on adult outcomes.
The best available data (from large, cross-national datasets) suggests that children of mothers who work tend to have better outcomes in adulthood than children of mothers who stay home. (An article with preliminary findings was in the NYT a few years ago.)
Among adults whose mothers worked: education rates tend to be higher for both men and women (compared to adults who grew up with non-working mothers); the daughters of working women tend to be more successful in their own careers; the sons of working women tend to have more egalitarian views about gender and to be better fathers themselves. The study found no difference in happiness or life satisfaction between adults whose mothers worked and those whose mothers did not.
Mothers (and fathers) should make their own choices about whether to work or not, and I can imagine all the anecdotes about how people's now-grown children turned out to be "amazing" after (because?) they stayed at home.
But since arguments about parents working are often couched in terms of how "successful" children will be later on on life, it is worth pointing out that the best research currently out there suggests that mothers can maximize their children's long-term life success by working, rather than by staying at home.
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Thank you for this sensible and sensitively written article. These concerns are the stock in trade of my practice in Reproductive Psychiatry. Clearly it will be reassuring for my patients, but I will also make sure that the clinicians I train will read it too.
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I’m all for a more relaxed approach to parenting. Our mantra has always been we’ll do what is best for our family.
But many, including the author, find evidence to support their beliefs, rather than the other way around. For example, yes I can find evidence that colic is natural and will go away in time. But I also know that as soon as my wife stopped having dairy, our daughter stopped being colicky. Like overnight. There is strong evidence that the inability to properly digest dairy in the mother’s breast milk early on leads to intense discomfort.
It’s so easy to find evidence to back up the choices we’re making. But the author misses one of the most important parenting guides that go beyond evidence: instinct. Humans have been parenting long before we had spreadsheets and science. Sometimes all the data may be pointing one way (like breastfeeding is better for a baby, WHICH IT IS) but if it’s painful or not working for you, don’t do it. Do what is best for your family, which means all members of your family.
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@NYLAkid You criticize the author for "find(ing) evidence to support their beliefs, rather than the other way around", and then you cite your personal experience as preferable to her review of diverse research studies?
Then you criticize the author for "missing" instinct, a concept you don't (and probably can't) define? The line about "spreadsheets and science" lends still more to the sense that it's you, not the author, who is the master of cherry-picking to see what you'd like to see.
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@MA
A lot of the effects they are seeing are small, vague, and don’t take into account other needs.
Aside from back sleeping for all but the very very small number of babies who just can’t sleep that way, very little of this research leads to big, obvious recommendations.
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"In the United States, and most developed countries, more educated and richer women are more likely to nurse their babies. This is the result of a host of factors, chief among them a lack of universal maternal supports." I don't doubt that there is a lack of maternal supports for breastfeeding. However, as an economist, have you not heard of Nestle's campaign to hook mothers on feeding their babies formula instead of breastfeeding? When I was growing up in the 1970s, my family boycotted all Nestle products because Nestle had the exploitative practice of giving away "free" formula to new mothers in developing countries. Their breastmilk would dry up and they'd be stuck buying formula. Because they were poor, they'd put less powder into the water than necessary. And the water was many times polluted. Nestle changed the culture of breastfeeding. It was a good lesson for me as a child not to trust corporations. Corporations don't have your best interests in mind, only monetary profit.
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I breast fed, I sleep trained and I worked full time. Breast feeding was made bearable by advice from peer moms. Throw a bottle of formula in there when you just cannot nurse or pump. In my case, pumping was not working. I stopped nursing at 6 months. No problem. In my experience, sleep training helped the baby and child self-soothe. My kid was able to put herself to sleep anywhere. No awful bedtime drama. And almost always an enjoyable bedtime ritual with bath and books. Work. I love my career. It is part of who I am. Much better for my family that I went back. I am soo blessed to have had choices. I am also lucky that I ignored the buzz about what I was “supposed” to do. Later in life moms tend to have more choices.
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There is research that shows that in the first 6 mos. of life, babies recognize their mothers by their sense of smell and react positively to that odor. If that is the case, it would be great if we could have paid maternity leave during that period to reduce anxiety separation for both mother and child.
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This is a great article, ... although like the Muller Report, there certainly is a temptation to "jump to the takeaways," rather than seriously weigh cost-benefit considerations.
Still, many millions of mothers would consider, for one example, breastfeeding differently if - I don't think the author actually broke new ground here - they felt that it did or did not have significant health benefits to their children.
One thing that is NOT mentioned, however, is my "pet peeve" - cellphones, and even if one realizes that both the author and the column have more of a focus on babies and toddlers than tweens & teens, THE PROBLEM IS BIG ... and getting bigger all the time.
The same "logic" that led my adult daughter and hundreds of thousands like her to buy her child a phone and insist that she "use it responsibly" - namely, this "might make a difference in an emergency" - is probably propelling the age-of-first-phone down from 15 5-10 years ago to 12 (?) currently ... to 6, maybe, in 5 years.
And whatever anyone can say about screen-time - particularly tablets - in terms of children's welfare ... IS AS NOTHING, when compared to the seamy side of phone use.
Yes - but briefly - I'm talking about cyberbullying and its seemingly tamer variants that all serve to undermine the self-worth of many, if not most, of those using such devices.
Nobody would willingly expose his/her child to danger ... but that's EXACTLY what they're doing when they succumb to "but everyone has one."
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As a High school teacher, I cannot overemphasize the damage I believe screens are doing to the young. Many, many students simply cannot concentrate on a printed page—during reading time in class, my job is not to walk around defining unknown words or answer questions, as I did as recently as 2012–it’s to enforce the ban on phones. Three minutes in, the whole room begins attempting to sneaking scroll.
I would urge all parent to put off screen time until late elementary school—no tv, no iPad, no movies. Trust you child’s ability to deal with boredom and not expect constant entertainment.
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@edtownes Speaking of which.... I advised my daughter with her two week old baby, please keep the cell phone away from you, at least 3 feet, when your are nursing, holding, or lying with your baby. At night, same thing, turn it off, put it on airplane mode, or just far away. Your baby will not benefit from being radiated, even if there are no studies for economists to look at. If you have wifi in your home, I'd suggest if possible, turn it off at night, or go wired.
Same thing while you are pregnant by the way.
1
I'm confused. The author is laser-focused on data-based decision making when it comes to parenting. She is politely skeptical about advice on breastfeeding, sleep training, etc. if it is not built on research that has a clear, randomized, empirical data-driven foundation. Yet she frames her entire argument inside the world of economics and the search for causation - and when focusing on a concept like "marginal value" she admits, "There may not be any useful data on this question, but economic theory still comes in handy.” So theorizing in economics is valuable, but in other areas it's not?
6
Thank you for the article! When my kids were born, I read the research on sleep training and came to the same conclusion: on average it improves sleep and inflicts no long term harm on the child. However, I personally didn’t want to do it and so I tried to find another kind of data: Does NOT sleep training an infant lead to more sleep problems for the child later in life? I couldn’t find any research on this, and and yet it seemed like an obvious question. Have any studies been done that look at this?
3
It's been interesting watching my sister have kids. She's constantly fearful of very remote risks over which she has very little control (eg, 1-in-100,000 children types of risks). Part of this is due to bad data/poor research and online hysteria, as this Oped describes, but a lot of it has to do with not reporting the baseline. For example, the author reports that breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast cancer by 20-30%. That sounds very large. But what is the baseline level of risk? What is the baseline risk for SIDS?
I watch my sister try to lower the risk of her daughter dying from risks that affect less than 0.001% of kids. Is she 10% safer if that risk drops to 0.009%? Nope. It's a lie without the baseline.
She's constantly throwing money away because the parent industrial complex tells her to do so. In some cases, she may actually be increasing the level of risk (eg, not exposing her child to some foods because of fears of allergies, which has been shown to increase the risk of allergies).
Rationality goes out the window with parenting. Resource and sleep deprivation has been shown to reduce cognitive effectiveness and lead to poor decision-making. So parents making decisions about risks when they haven't slept or are carrying a large mental load is probably more dangerous. It seems like the best thing to do is to provide the baseline so they can make better choices and also tell them to get some sleep so they make smarter and better choices for their children.
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Wouldn't meaningful data require shared agreement on what a "successful" outcome looks like? My brother and his wife are high earners who work long hours. Their children we're sleep trained from the start and have, since birth, spent at least 10 hours a day outside the home. They're being raised to view their needs in the context of this earning paradigm, and their individual feelings aren't given much weight. They're also being raised in the church, with much instruction about obedience to authority. I'm sure, when they get older, the kids will be great employees and never question the social institutions that affect their lives, and their parents will be very proud. But if those were my kids, I would feel like I failed them at every turn.
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Ms. Oster individualizes and thus misidentifies the problem.
Statistics tell us that breastfeeding rates in the US are lower than most other developed countries, with the lowest rates in poor communities. There are other significant inequities in the US when it comes to parenting support. The poorer the parent, the more limited the support (lactation help, healthcare, paid parental leave...and the list goes on).
The US is also one of the few countries that does not adhere to the W.H.O code for formula marketing, with maternity wards handing out formula care packages to breastfeeding moms and allowing direct marketing of formula.
The problem is not about mothers that can't or opt not to breastfeed, but that those who want to often can't.
24
I have two grown children that are amazing. My ONLY advice to new parents is to {if possible} stay with your partner.
I think babies, kids, teens, adult children need a tribe of people in their orbit that love and care for them.
I realize this is not the point of your article, but I get asked often what I did and I can say that staying in my relationship with my partner, was the most difficult part of parenting, but the most important for the children.
I loved your article!!!
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Stay with your partner if you’re in a love relationship. If not, get out! Staying together for “the children’s sake” is usually a bad situation
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@Kathy Zamsky
"I think babies, kids, teens, adult children need a tribe of people in their orbit that love and care for them."
Yes, that's the most important thing, whether or not you stay with your partner. In many cases leaving the partner is the best decision, but you can still remember how important it is for the child to have a circle of belonging. Not just one parent, a circle. That means you don't feel jealous of others who love the child, and you arrange for the child to spend time with others who care. In addition to the time you spend listening and loving yourself, of course!
4
For another perspective, I recommend not having any kids. No kids = no worries. And I'm not heartless; I understand the joy they bring and the blessing of caring for them... as an uncle to my nieces and nephews. Best of both worlds, actually. Try it!
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It's best not to read any of the advice books at all. I raised my two kids the best of my ability. They turned out fine.
23
Articles about how difficult it is to breast-feed are just as bad as articles about how important it is. Please remember that many new mothers really DON'T have any problem breast-feeding.
There's no point in going into new-motherhood with doubts and with fears. Even if you're over thirty! New mothers have been figuring it out for millions of years.
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Disagree. When I had a ton of trouble breastfeeding, the main thing that pulled me through was hearing from other moms who had also had difficulties and eventually were successful. Made me feel much more hopeful and much less alone, which are two things any new mom needs. In retrospect, I would have had less initial angst when I had trouble if I’d known it was tough for many. Telling everyone it’s likely to be easy and women have been doing it for millions of years creates unrealistic expectations that for many of us - and this is anecdotal, but I know only one woman who had an easy time nursing and needed no support - doesn’t pan out.
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@Trilby I don't understand why so many mothers complain about how difficult and painful it is to breastfeed. Everyone I knew with infants 30+ years ago breastfed without difficulty. I was in a mother's group so I knew lots of mothers with infants.
We are mammals. We have evolved to breastfeed.
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@Trilby
I disagree. There are endless sources on why it's so great and virtually nothing to make you feel okay when you discover that--at least for you--it's really challenging. It's the first major mother thing you do and--oh no--it's not working! That can be devastating.
18
Breastfeeding has options too - you can always leave your nursing baby with a relative if you go to a wedding - with a bottle of formula, which in my baby's case, was a sometime thing.
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@Piemonte
A bottle of formula? There's industrial strength pumps out now that work wonders. A bottle of mom's milk is better.
2
As a pediatrician of over 30 years I am so grateful for this article. I spend so much time trying to debunk “truths” that are simply not based on convincing evidence and which stress families. I can’t wait to read Dr. Ouster’s book. Based on this article I think it will become a standard recommendation for my new parents.
106
My wife did not breast feed. She tried but it ain't easy. Yet we, like many other educated couples, did a lot of other things - like making sure our son had a good diet, we spoke to him, read to him etc. Turned out fine and healthy. Sometimes there is too much advice. The doctor's advice not to think about it is spot on.
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I think the key to this is that it is mostly moms arguing with other moms about what to do. What is glaringly absent from this is anyone telling dads what to do. Are they agonizing over any of these issues? Do other men badger or cajole them? No. And if they do, it is only very occasionally, rather than all the time. They are also much less likely to have a major shift in identity after becoming a parent.
So, while I appreciate this clearheaded look at all the issues, the most important issue seems to me the constant competition and criticism that women engage in on virtually every topic. (I certainly was expected to go head-to-head about whose labor was tougher.) I have no idea why women are so interested in this, but we are, and that is the real difficulty.
19
Human’s compete for status over most everything. The more important the thing the fiercer the competition. Pregnancy and breastfeeding are female activities. They are important ones and involve a lot of effort over long periods. No surprise there’s a female culture that forms around them or that it expands to cover other aspects of child rearing. And no surprise that culture includes a lot of status competition.
8
Anthropologists and others who have had signigicant contact with hunter gatherers have noted that their babies hardly ever cry or throw up. The babies are held almost constantly during their first year by an average of 12 individual tribe members per day. They sleep in close proximity to their parents.
I know it is unrealistic to expect our society to provide the resources necessary for this kind of intense child rearing. No one is to blame for falling short of this evolutionarily established, 200,000 year old standard given the demands placed on parents these days. But, what we might consider as trivial differences between these two child rearing practices may have profound effects on childhood development that manifest later in a host of adult maladies - many of which are probably due to a chronic dysregulation of the stress response system, a residue of the unresolved loss of secure attachment from childhood.
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@Anam Cara I wish this was more widely understood, if only to squash the myth of "traditional" parenting where one mother stays home with her children, alone.
5
@Anam Cara Maybe this is why we moderns, for all our material advantages and sense of superiority over the people who have come before us, are so deeply unhappy.
8
@someone
Yes, both models - the one with both parents working, even with some initial parental leave after birth, and the one with one parent staying home to care for a newborn are utterly inadequate to establish the mentalization of a secure base within the child that is so necessary for stress resilience throughout life.
1
Excellent article. Many women do not have the luxury of choice I tried breastfeeding, and did so up to six weeks with my children but with my work, it was impossible to keep it up, plus I had to go back to work after six weeks. I do agree with the author that more paid maternity leave would be extremely beneficial for mothers. At least 3 months paid maternity leave should be mandatory. Having a baby is a tumultous change, especially if a baby is colicky like one of mine was. I used sleep training with all of my children and was happy I did so because they ended up sleeping through the night at 8 weeks and I was able to get the rest I needed to make it through my work day. For most moms and dads today having to work is not a true choice. People work to give their kids a better future, to pay for healthcare, to pay for schooling. I now have the pleasure of babysitting grandchildren whose mothers are choosing more and more to breastfeed as long as possible. This is a good economic choice for them and has worked out well, but only because today, many work places support pumping and give moms time to pump. I agree with all of the points you make. Each child is unique, each family is unique and there is no manual. Grandparents, keep all of this in mind, and don't criticize your grandkids' parents. Just give them lots of love and support.
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@Silvana
It’s also important to note that having to stay home isn’t always a choice either.
I don't pretend its strictly a choice and not a product of a lot of intense social, economic, and other forces, but I am amazed at how articles on older parenting can ignore the elephant in the room. How can we worry about whether breast feeing or not has a modest rise in the lower risks to eczema when the entire choice to have a baby a decade later than our ancestors provides much greater health risks for parent and baby.
The most highly regarded study on this issue does not make the choice a simple one. The results demonstrated that a mother and child is at the least risk for serious disability starting at 17 and with each passing year the health risks to mother and child grow the longer we wait. Our bodies were simply not designed for births in the late 30s and 40s. We are not talking about autism alone which greatly increases over this period as is much discussed. As a society, we should address this reality as well.
11
@DoctorRPP
I dislike biologically deterministic arguments, particularly when they are a veneer for one's opinion. Our bodies were also not designed to visit outer space or the depths of the ocean, but culture and technology allow us to surpass our design specs.
I'd also like to see a citation for the startling fact that "our ancestors" didn't have babies in their thirties and forties. Prior to birth control, how exactly did they manage that?
4
@DoctorRPP Were our bodies designed to live to 70-80-90-100? No. Were our bodies designed to live in heated and artificially lighted houses? No. Were our bodies designed to survive childhood by ingesting antibiotics? No. Were our bodies designed to learn to read? No. Were our bodies designed for office work? No. Your point is?
2
@Texican I was a history major and as I learned, before birth control most married women had children right up to the age of menopause. There are historically some primitive methods of birth control, such as premature withdrawal, but they weren't very reliable. The Victorians had condoms, diaphragms, and vaginal douches, but many couples did not use them.
This article supports what has long been my general philosophy when it comes to my own kids: nothing really matters as long as I love and interact with them. Thanks for confirming!
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