No it wasn’t that I accidentally sat on the remote control and discovered my mum and dad having a row in Jeremy Kyle’s green room. It was the utterly ridiculous study that was somehow granted 5 minutes worth of sofa-time on BBC Breakfast this morning; a study that has apparently revealed that breastfed babies have a better chance of upward class mobility in later life.
Before I get verbally battered by breastfeeder’s, it’s worth pointing out that I’m pro-choice. I breastfed Dexter for almost 2 months before Strep B landed him in hospital, and stress meant I could not express enough to exclusively sustain him. Had Dexter not experienced these problems, I like to think I would have carried on. Certainly with baby 2 I’ll be whipping out the 36GG’s and saving on extortionate formula prices. As studies have suggested this can be a way of losing the baby weight, I’m fully onboard! But this ridiculous segment this morning got on my nerves.
I’ve written before about ethical health reporting and spurious research. It’s a pet hate of mine to turn on my TV (especially to BBC) to discover so-called health experts making outlandish claims and making a mockery out of serious debates. The sound-byte culture we live in means that sexy health-related headlines end up getting precious air-time, and it doesn’t matter if they are supported by empirical evidence or not. If it sounds shocking and supports a wider NHS agenda, let’s run with it.
It doesn’t matter that I haven’t graduated from Cambridge with a degree in breastfeeding, I’m quite prepared to say that this report is utter nonsense.
I was pleased to see that Bill Turnbull and Louise Minchin greeted this woman (Amanda Sacker, University College London) and her shoddy report with just as much scepticism as I did. Louise’s questions were loaded with apprehension and she asked the same questions I would have asked (with just a little more restraint than I’d have mustered) - “What about mother’s who express?“, “Or mother’s that have breastfed one, yet not another child?“. It was these arguments that quickly saw the ‘expert’ backtrack and insist that other factors would balance out the discrepancy. If this doesn’t reveal just how woefully shallow her argument is, I don’t know what does!
It seems to me (and hopefully any other rational human being) that children who grow into successful adults and manage to improve upon the social standing of their parents, are a product of several different factors. Baseline class would of course be one; it surely depends on which ‘class’ (sigh) your parents fall into, that will determine how minor or huge the next step up will be. Location, the strength of the family unit, family finances, childhood experiences… there are just so many factors that come into play beyond-the-breast.
The ‘expert’ explained her study in scant detail as though even she was embarrassed and wanted to skirt over its lack of credibility. She stated that she followed two groups of women - group 1 exclusively breastfed their babies, group 2 did not. No mention was made of the size and location of these groups*, and no statistical evidence was proffered to support the claim. The Daily Telegraph also appears to have lent the unconvincing Amanda Sacker some credence, but even these stats fail to convince me there is anything worth investigating further.
The research paper, published in the British Medical Journal, uses information from long-running studies of the lives of two groups of around 17,000 people: one set born in a single week in 1958 and another born during a single week in 1970.
They were each assigned to one of four nominal social classes based on their father’s job when they were 10 or 11 – ranging from “unskilled” to “professional”. They were then reassigned based on their own line of work when they were 33 or 34.
The study, the first study of its kind, found that overall those who had been breastfed were 24 per cent more likely to move up a class between childhood and their early 30s.
Some also dropped to a “lower” class but those who were breastfed were 20 per cent less likely to have done so than those who weren’t. DAILY TELEGRAPH
It amazes me that this supposedly well-qualified and intelligent woman (who is no doubt funded by Government and our cash-strapped NHS) is prepared to perpetuate such a weak claim. It cheapens a very valid argument for breastfeeding, and heaps new anxiety on bottlefeeders everywhere. Let’s try to stick to the facts in future please BBC.
To see more reaction, head on over to BBC Breakfast’s Facebook page.
* Robert Winston went on to explain in a later segment that some 34,000 women were involved. Curiously he backs and welcomes the study and refers to the habits of rodents (exclusively breastfed animals) to prove that breastfeeding helps with cognitive ability and brain development. Although I can’t for the life of me see why rodents are significant in this assertion, I don’t disagree that breastfeeding offers a wealth of health benefits. Quite why any of these would have any influence at all on a child’s sociability and class is beyond me.
