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The nannies are not breastfeeding in crucial early life years, or providing the skin contact and natural maternal affection that leads to healthy offspring. And because women are averse to pairing with men below their income unless the men compensate with unusual attractiveness, they have a lower rate of marriage than they would otherwise have. And because the school years are intense, they are delaying marriage. This dysgenic effect is more serious than the economic inefficiency effect, because you can’t easily produce more high iq citizens. In a pronatal culture, high iq women have more children than average, learning the skills of husband-acquiring and homemaking at an earlier age.
Besides AWFLs being perhaps the most likely demographic to breastfeed, there's no convincing evidence for benefits of breastfeeding outside of a slight reduction in minor rashes or gastrointestinal upset in babies. Nobody has demonstrated long-run benefits for the child of any kind.
This... doesn't pass the sniff test. Formula almost certainly isn't quite as good as breastmilk and we know early childhood nutrition is very important.
There's a wealth of literature on this. A Belarusian RCT is perhaps the most rigorous. It found reductions in skin and digestive conditions, but these conditions were rare even in the formula group, and it found no effect on respiratory conditions.
They followed up with the kids at age 6.5 (Kramer 2010) and found no evidence of health benefits.
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It's a subject ripe for a more classic 'political correctness' to overtake it since there are mothers out there who can not breastfeed and the notion that these loving parents are depriving their children of optimal nutrition and upbringing is charged to say the least.
If you've ever been in a maternity ward it's difficult to convey how hard the staff pushes for breastfeeding. In my deep blue area mothers who just had a C section and have a baby in the NICU are constantly pressured to breastfeed (despite the pain from the surgery site while holding the baby) and pump to provide milk to the baby. All the usual progressive suspects (WHO, APA) are pro-breastfeeding. We are very much in the "breast is best" era.
That has not been my experience with my 3 kids. My impression is that there has been significant pushback against the push for breastfeeding so now the nurses and doctors are so careful not to push for breastfeeding that it feels like they are marketing formula.
I've talked with similarly aged parents (35-45) in other countries, including the US, and they shared similar experiences.
I don't know what it's like in your country but this is simply not the general case in the US. Not to say that nobody has a contrary experience, but the entire medical establishment is pro-breastfeeding as a matter of policy and there's lactation consultants lurking behind every corner in the maternal wards.
The same is true in Sweden but they have become so careful about not putting pressure on women or shaming them that they effectively come off as borderline promoting formula.
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As someone with young minds I can confirm that this is no longer the case. It is kinda crazy how they push breastfeeding now. It’s almost as if they know it’s much better than formula.
My youngest is <2.
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And having been around a person who could not breastfeed, the only reassurance that can possibly be offered is 'it doesn't really matter' and 'babies that are breastfed also get 'gastrointestinal upset' all the time, it's not your fault'.
I don't disagree that we are in the "breast is best" era, but the subject is nevertheless ripe for political correctness to overtake it.
If political correctness were to overtake it, it would have already happened.
Things have been moving fast for the past two decades, that doesn't mean everything has happened.
In either case it's besides the point. The emotional weakspot of breastfeeding is obvious in this context. Not wanting to make those who can't breastfeed feel bad is exactly the type of thing that skews the lib/left/progressive academia to churn out bad research.
It's actually the "bad research" that provides evidence for breastfeeding. Basic observational studies show massive gains from breastfeeding because women who breastfeed are higher IQ, higher conscientiousness, etc. and these studies are trotted out every time this question is litigated.
It's basically thanks to once in a generation studies like PROBIT that actually do an RCT where people would usually claim it's impossible to do one that we can look behind the curtain.
It's remarkable to keep harping on this despite the fact that the entire medical and scientific establishment which is eaten through with progressives is fully on board with breastfeeding and has study after study to ""support"" this position. Breastfeeding is the progressive position and only terminal contrarians disagree that it has major benefits.
At some point your beliefs have to bottom out in observable reality rather than what you wish your opponents would do. Progressives are not against breastfeeding. They are not pro formula. This should be obvious especially if you've ever spent time around progressive mothers rather than theory crafting what the outgroup would believe.
Happy to place a bet if you really think that the medical establishment is going to obviously do an about face on this question.
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What would it look like if that happened? We'd get a bunch of studies showing powdered milk in a plastic bottle is just as good as actual milk from a mother's body, despite that being as crazy as claiming powdered milk is just as good as regular milk.
If it happened, the official recommendations from the AAP and the WHO would be ambivalent between breastfeeding and formula. Is that the recommendation? No? Then no, it hasn't happened.
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And so we're back around to the subject of the OP.
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Given the social class correlates of breastfeeding, female doctors almost certainly pump so the nanny has breastmilk on hand, and being literal doctors they have access to medical interventions to enable later childbearing- I'd be surprised if female doctors had fewer kids than female accountants, lawyers, etc. Upper class modern women have a low TFR because they choose to do this, not because they start having kids in their thirties(it's totally possible to have 3+ kids starting after thirty- I know a lot of people who've done it- and once more doctors have, by virtue of their incomes and training, access to much better medical interventions for enabling such things than the general public). Female doctors simply don't want to have more than two and so they don't. Yes yes cultural values. But 'women can go to medschool' is a minor part compared to the barrage of antinatalist propaganda shoved down their throats.
Given how good formula is, the chances that pumped, refrigerated, then reheated, breastmilk is providing whatever marginal benefits from-the-source breastmilk does is probably dubious at best. I mean, the formula powder is made to be mixed, heated, etc. Breast milk is made to be drank from the breast. Anything else and its probably rapidly degrading, particularly if you are returning it to body temp for serving.
Not that I dont applaud the effort of pumping. At the very least its converting your excess fat into something useful. It might even provide a 0.1% advantage for you (any greater seems dubious with the stats now, plus my own experiences).
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It is significantly less pleasant being the parent of a young child in your late 30s compared to your late 20s
I saw someone remark 'You're able to pull all-nighters in college because that's when you should be having children' and that line as stuck in me like a thorn.
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I'll second this. I know, I know, starting later means you've had more time to improve your economic situation, but I just don't see that as worth the downsides, as far as my own life and those others I observe IRL go.
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Having experienced the latter and currently experiencing the former, I wish I could have started in my early 20s.
Yep. My wife and I had our final kid mid 30s. The first few months hit harder compared to our first in late 20s despite having a lot more experience re mid 30s
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I 100% believe this but there's like 10,000 things that push upper middle class women to have kids in their thirties instead of their twenties, it isn't a 'education takes too long' problem even if that's part of the problem. If we're going to worry about that maybe worry about how long courtship takes nowadays first.
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A brief search suggests wet nursing still exists as a practice in the US, but isn't terribly common. Maybe that'd see a resurgence, but honestly formula babies seen to turn out mostly okay too.
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