My Loving, Chaotic Life

When I became a mom, I was unaware at how often each and every choice made would profoundly affect my child...or does it? It seems that there is a debate for almost every parenting aspect out there: breastfed/bottlefed, stay at home mom/work out of the home mom, vax/non-vax, circ/non-circ, etc.

However, these debates tend to do only one thing: bring a mother down. I know there are some very distinct opinions on the topics I listed earlier, but I want to focus on only one in this blog. It pertains to this news article that I read today:

Breast-feeding Linked To High Grades, College

Really? I was intrigued at this article because I've never seen a statistic that has proof that breastfed babies are more likely to have higher grades and go to college than the bottlefed babies.

Then, I took a closer look at the article. I found these quotes very interesting.

Professors Joseph Sabia from the American University and Daniel Rees from the University of Colorado Denver based their research on 126 children from 59 families, comparing siblings who were breast-fed as infants to others who were not.

and...

The study, published in the Journal of Human Capital, found that an additional month of breast-feeding was associated with an increase in high school grade point averages of 0.019 points and an increase in the probability of college attendance of 0.014.

Out of 126 children, the study found that each month of breastfeeding caused an increase of .019 GPA and .014 probability of college attendance.

Um...ok.

I'm sorry, but I feel like this is another one of those "bad mommy" articles. It is an article that headline causes any mother who either chose to not breastfed or couldn't breastfed to question their bottlefed child's ability to receive higher grades and attend college.

However, the actual article doesn't even have enough meat in it to argue an effective point. Out of 126 children, the breastfed child has a hundredth point higher GPA and probable college attendance per additional month of breastfeeding. Seriously.

Mothers have so much going against them in society. There are these ridiculous standards that no mom can truly ever meet. The sad thing is we (as moms) can blame articles as pitting one mommy group against another, but it really comes down to realizing that every mom is doing the best job that she can. She is making the best decision for her child, and we should support those decisions instead of tearing apart the mom.