14 DAY TRIAL // The importance of young mothers to nurse their newborn children has often been stressed, with countless studies showing that the high nutritional content of their milk helps increase the baby’s IQ, among many other things. A new study comes now to prove that a mother’s milk is also linked to more positive parenting, helping both her and the child build a much stronger relationship that will last throughout their entire life.
By analyzing the behavior of 1,136 young moms, researchers at London’s Institute of Education have managed to show that those nursing their baby for a longer while were also more likely to be able to engage them in certain activities. In order to establish this, the mothers were asked to read a storybook to their one-year-old child, and it became obvious that those who had nursed them made less effort to engage their child in the story, as opposed to moms who had bottle-fed them.
The study also showed that the former had a much warmer relationship with their baby than those who bottle-fed them. Oddly enough, researchers also proved that this held true only for single, low-income moms, and was obvious for at least the first five years of the baby’s life. On the other hand, nursing seemed to have no long-lasting effect on married mothers who had higher salaries.
“Breastfeeding had a positive association with parenting, regardless of marital status or income level.” Dr. Leslie Gutman, research director of the Institute’s Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning, says. At the same time, she points out that more mothers should be encouraged not to put their baby on the bottle, because their bond would be stronger that way. However, most women decide to resort to the bottle for purely financial reasons, as they have to return to work for the money.
“Mothers can be tempted to put their babies on the bottle earlier if they feel they have to return to work for financial reasons. Obviously, it is not a good time to be talking about benefits but that is one possibility, as we have shown their are big, long term advantages to be gained. Mothers are given information leaflets in hospitals but we may need more than this. Another option is workplace nurseries where mothers could go and feed their babies during the day.” Dr. Gutman further explains about future steps that should be taken to ensure that more women become aware of the positive effects of nursing.