A new study says children breastfed for a year get better GCSE results – but the media storm around the research has left many of you feeling upset.
Hundreds of women have told us about their fury and upset over the coverage of a new study that found some correlation between breastfeeding and exam results at GCSE level. The study, of 5,000 children by the University of Oxford, found that children breastfed for at least a year were 38 per cent more likely to get a high pass in their English GCSE exam, compared to children who were not breastfed. These children were 39 per cent more likely to get the same top grade in the maths GCSE.
What was really upsetting, though, was to see so many women feeling that even in a safe space like The Juggle – and in hidden, direct messages – they had to justify why they didn’t breastfeed, or breastfeed for as long as a year. You told us about operations, life-saving treatments you needed, tongue-ties, a million things out of your control to ‘justify’ yourselves. It shouldn't have to be that way.
There are a myriad of reasons why that could be, here's some off the top of my head… It all happens when you’re at the most vulnerable you’ve ever been. The image, drawn up over years of patriarchally controlled medicine that one thing is ‘natural’ and another isn’t. Studies like this that make women feel that even from day one, they’re ‘failing’ at something that could make or break their child's life.
‘The results of this study are perhaps not as strong as the media coverage would have you believe,’ she said. ‘Only a small proportion of children in the researchers’ original, wider study were actually eligible for and included in this particular arm of the study. Also, as the researchers themselves have pointed out, the correlation between breastfeeding duration and academic achievement is actually fairly minimal. There may be a beneficial effect, but it is modest.
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