Hundreds of women have told us about their fury and upset over the coverage of a new study that found some correlation between breastfeeding (for more than a year) 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 (A or A*) 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.
The research received extensive coverage in the press and when we asked on The Juggle how seeing the many headlines had made you feel, hundreds of you told us you were annoyed, triggered, and worried for new mums seeing them today.
‘I was not breastfed, neither were a lot of my school friends,’ said one. ‘We got some of the top marks in the country. It’s about making women feel inadequate and putting more pressure on them. New mums need support, not being told they aren’t doing enough.’
‘It makes me feel like a failure,’ said another – with scores more who did not breastfeed for the year mentioned in the study, echoing the sentiment. ‘Just when I stop feeling so guilty about formula feeding along comes something else.'
It makes me feel like I've failed my kid.
Many pointed out that the link was moderate and that many, many other factors come into play: ‘It’s frustrating as it is impossible to study as an isolated variable and is probably a sign of inequality as opposed to how you were fed as an infant.’ The study itself acknowledged this, saying that while it did take into account parents’ socioeconomic position and the mother’s intelligence, they did not look at factors like the family’s wealth directly. And to flip that, as many of you said, why should exam results be the bar to strive for? ‘There’s much more than grades and Oxford!’ you told us.
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.
And that’s the crux of the matter. As much as we can tell ourselves we know that fed is best, or that decisions are out of our hands, or that – actually – we made that decision for a million reasons that are good enough, there is still such awful judgement and shame around our breastfeeding journeys.
Why is it that we could probably see a study about how (completely hypothetically) kids grades are affected by watching 19 Hey Duggees in a row, or solely eating chips for three months, or me wanting to scroll through Instagram for five minutes rather than ‘BE A HORSEY’ for the 91st time… and give a wry eyeroll at best?
Every moment we make parenting decisions that could change something and nothing. But it’s breastfeeding that is the one many of us can’t get past.
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 fact that there’s an ongoing narrative that breast is best – but no real clinical structure to support you get to that point and the feelings of shame and frustration that creep into the chasm between those two things. Instagram. The fact that ‘mothering’ is now an industry – and the messages that places in front of us. That we’re a unique generation of girlbosses who have been raised to believe that if we try hard enough, we can grind our way to anything and that this is often one of the first times in our lives that’s not worked (or possible thanks to constantly decreasing support) and that's a huge ideological shift of identity to deal with when you’re sleep-deprived, pumped full of hormones and desperately out of your depth.
It could be any of those things. But when I struggled to breastfeed my first child, honestly it was devastating and untethering in a way I couldn’t even explain to you now or could have ever expected. And to think about those days now – and the subsequent effect it had on my mental health – is still like kickboxing a deep purple bruise in a way nothing else in my life has ever been. And my rational brain can’t override those feelings. I’d guess some of you feel the same - that we could talk about it forever, but still not understand why that is.
While messaging that ‘fed is best’ floated above the surface barely touching my guilt, one thing I did (in a rare logical moment) think about was how I had no idea if any of my friends were breastfed or not when they were little. Maybe, I could believe, down the line it actually didn’t matter. Yes, I knew it really. But then studies like this come along and can poleaxe the protection you’ve built around those moments, the bits of your brain that with time you’ve built back into a more logical order.
We are the first generation of mothers that are constantly exposed to our parenthood online.
And while our mothers might’ve been able to get space from their early birth experiences, we’re amongst the first mothers who are so constantly exposed to our parenthood, with devices in hand packed with algorithms designed to beat us over the head with that specific part of our identity. We're flooded by social media, the influencer-fication of motherhood and a 24 hour news cycle. It can be hard to find any space from being a parent these days – and therefore the ‘failures’ are always that bit closer to the surface.
So there’s all of that. And about… a million more individual reasons why these stories hit hard.
Midwife and author Leah Hazard is one of the many useful and reassuring voices out there, who today we have sought comfort from, should you also feel you need it:
‘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. Perhaps most importantly, the researchers have pointed out that the biggest confounding factor that may have influenced the results is mothers’ socioeconomic status. This is a complex factor that’s about so much more than just how much money a person makes, or what kind of job they have. It’s almost impossible to quantify things like how much pressure is on a person to return to work, what other financial burdens they have, how much support they have from family and community, and whether their workplace, if they do return, provides adequate time and resources for breastfeeding/expressing.
‘Ultimately, although the UK would like to promote itself as being breastfeeding-friendly, our current society under the Tory government is anything but. Maternity services are seriously underfunded, midwives and health visitors are stretched past their limits, social support and affordable childcare are lacking, and the cost of living crisis puts pressure on new mothers to return to work as quickly as possible. No single study can quantify the massive obstacles to breastfeeding in modern Britain, let alone breastfeeding for long enough to achieve any hypothetical academic advantages.’
Asked what she’d say to any women feeling triggered by the story today, Leah added: ‘I can certainly relate to any mother who feels upset by today’s reporting. I struggled to breastfeed my first child for longer than a week and felt like a massive failure, and I’ve looked after so many new mothers who have also blamed themselves for not being able to achieve their short- or long-term feeding goals.
‘Please remember that any study you see in the news is just one tiny piece of a very large and complex puzzle. Your feeding journey is unique to you. We do know that breastfeeding has clear clinical advantages, but it shouldn’t be pursued to the detriment of a new parent’s mental health. Do what you can, and forgive yourself for what you can’t.’
There’s the rational, logical brain – and then there’s the one reserved for panicking about parenting decisions. That might not be how Freud had it, but it’s certainly my experience. So if you’ve read all of that, but something still stings, I understand. But Leah’s is certainly a new mantra that could work for every facet of parenting, and is worth taking away today. ‘Do what you can, and forgive yourself for what you can’t.’