Research newly published by the British Medical Journal has concluded that babies are not more intelligent because they are breastfed. Although the researchers from the MRC Social and Public Health Services Unit in Glasgow and the Dept of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh accepted there are other health benefits to being breastfed, their analysis suggested that bottlefed babies did not have a lesser IQ because of the way in which they took milk.

Mother's own IQ a factor in baby's intelligence
The study looked at the data of 5475 children and assessed factors in their mother's background. They concluded that the reason breastfed babies tended to have a higher IQ was because mothers who breastfeed are more likely to have a higher IQ. Mothers with a higher IQ were found to have a positive influence on early mental stimulation of their children which helped increase their intelligence ratings. These findings were bolstered by the example of families where a second child had not been breastfed but had a similar level of intelligence to the first, breastfed child.

Mixed messages on breastfeeding
The UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe and, despite World Health Organisation recommendations that all babies be breastfed solely for the first six months of life, mainstream perception of breastfeeding still finds women unclear about the benefits of feeding their baby themselves.

Whilst the study does not seek to denegrate the value of breastfeeding from a health and bonding perspective, it will come as a great relief to the many women each year who find breastfeeding hard or impossible, and who often feel 'guilty' when they opt to give their baby formula milk.

For more detail about the study, go to the British Medical Journal website.