Breastfeeding vs. Formula

Photo illustration by Yahoo Parenting

This one gets as heated as a Kanye West rant. I’ve heard both sides: breastfeeding moms calling formula moms “selfish,” formula moms calling breastfeeding moms, or at least organizations like La Leche League International, “evangelists.” Moms who don’t, or can’t breastfeed are often made to feel like criminals: A friend of mine—a first-time mom and breast-cancer survivor who was unable to breastfeed after a double mastectomy—left a birthing class crying after the instructors made non-nursing moms sound like crappy caregivers. And while the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies are exclusively breastfed for six months, and that they continue with only breast milk and solid food until one year, most moms make the switch to formula earlier. According to the Center for Disease Control’s latest “Breastfeeding Report Card,” 79 percent of newborns in the U.S. started out breastfed in 2011. At six months, 49 percent were breastfed, and at 12 months, only 27 percent.

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The Research

According to the National Institutes of Health, the benefits of breastfeeding include protection from common childhood illnesses and infections, a decreased chance of allergies and type 1 diabetes, and a decreased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. There are benefits for mom, too. The National Resources Defense Council cites a multitude of research on its website: “Breastfeeding releases a hormone in the mother (oxytocin) that causes the uterus to return to its normal size more quickly,” “breastfeeding appears to reduce the mother’s risk of osteoporosis in the later years,” and “women who lactate for a total of two or more years reduce their chances of developing breast cancer by 24 percent.”

However, a 2014 study published in Social Science & Medicine found no statistically significant difference between the breast-fed and formula-fed babies that participated in the research. The scientists studied 1,773 sets of siblings where one child was breastfed and the other formula fed, and they deduced that the longterm benefits often attributed to breastfeeding might actually be a factor of the good overall health of women who choose to breastfeed. Another study published in the journal PLoS ONE reported that breast-fed babies “were rated by their mothers as having more challenging temperaments… greater distress, less smiling, laughing and vocalization, and lower soothability.”

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What the Experts Say

Dr. Melissa Bartick, an internist and an assistant professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, tells Scientific American: “Breastfeeding is the standard to which all other feeding methods should be compared. It’s not best, it’s not optimal—it’s just normal.”

Joan B. Wolf, professor of gender studies at Texas A&M University, and author of “Is Breast Best? Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood,” writes in the New York Times that, “I have found the benefits of breastfeeding in the developed world nonexistent, marginal or impossible to disentangle from other aspects of a child’s life. The more a given study accounts for parenting practices — promoting hygiene, avoiding crowded places when babies are young, reading to and otherwise engaging with older children, exercising, etc. — the less breastfeeding seems to matter at all.”

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What Parents Say

“I returned to work soon after my daughter was born and often went a couple days without seeing her, so providing breast milk, through pumping, was my way of staying connected. Plus, everything I’d read just made me feel like breastmilk was the best thing for her from a nutritional standpoint. Plus, I detest the smell of formula, so I was lucky I had enough milk to exclusively breastfeed for the first year!” — Danielle Broude, San Francisco, CA

“So many of my friends had issues with breastfeeding—whether it was clogged milk ducts or babies not latching or kids not getting enough and then screaming because they were starving. Rather than add that to the sleep deprivation and other tribulations of being a new mom, I figured I would give my sons formula and at least know they were getting enough to eat and have one less thing to worry about. ” — Alissa Levine, Rye Brook, NY

“I knew I wanted to breastfeed based on the health benefits for the baby that are pretty hard to ignore these days, so I set myself a goal of six months. That meant breastfeeding for four months and pumping at work for two months after maternity leave. Around the five-month mark, I’d gone through my freezer supply of extra milk and couldn’t keep up with the pumping, which I struggled with and absolutely hated. We started supplementing with formula and it was like a huge weight had been lifted. Before I started supplementing, I felt like a failure if I turned to formula, but once I started, it relieved so much pressure, and made me realize that formula is not evil! I continued to breastfeed when I could until about six and half months, and felt great that I hit my goal.” — Callie Siegel, Brooklyn, NY

The Bottom Line

Most public health organizations — the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization — do recommend breastfeeding for at least the first year. But the fact is, many women have trouble, which also needs to be taken into account. “No amount of support will cause a woman with insufficient glandular tissue to spontaneously lactate, or change a woman’s complex emotional landscape, or alter the gut of a severely allergic baby whose mother must exist on boiled chicken and water to continue nursing,” writes Suzanne Barston, the author of “Bottled Up: How the Way We Feed Babies Has Come to Define Motherhood, and Why It Shouldn’t,” in theNew York Times. “It won’t change the mind of a woman who simply doesn’t want to breastfeed, for her own personal and valid reasons. … Instead of the continuous loop of tired arguments, we could be focusing our energy on training infant feeding counselors who could help with whatever form of feeding a family ends up employing.”