LESSWRONG
LW

142
sandstoneviolin (Andrew)
5020
Message
Dialogue
Subscribe

Posts

Sorted by New

Wikitag Contributions

Comments

Sorted by
Newest
No posts to display.
No wikitag contributions to display.
Nursing doubts
sandstoneviolin (Andrew)1y32

YES! These points are tremendously overlooked. Breastfeeding was a major psychological issue for my partner for these reasons, as well as some others that might have been a bit personal or idiosyncratic. Either way, it's not AT ALL a zero-cost choice.

Reply
Nursing doubts
sandstoneviolin (Andrew)1y40

Back when my co-parent & I were navigating these decisions 6-10 years ago, we came across a study that really shaped our thinking: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077166/. Basically, the researchers analyzed outcomes in families where the siblings were breastfeeding-discordant. The punchline: "Once we restrict analyses to siblings and incorporate within-family fixed effects, estimates of the association between breastfeeding and all but one indicator of child health and wellbeing dramatically decrease and fail to maintain statistical significance."

It's only a single study, but it takes a fairly unique approach to addressing the issues in observational research on the topic, and as such, we weighed it pretty heavily in our decision-making. It's also worth keeping in mind that parental happiness and mental health makes a difference, and breastfeeding was very challenging to my co-parent from that standpoint (although the details are another story).

Reply