Does breastfeeding make babies smarter?
There has been a lot of debate on the question of whether breastmilk makes babies smarter. Breastmilk does contain certain nutrients that may be important for brain growth that are not found in formulas. Several studies do show that children who were breastfed have, on the whole, slightly higher IQ scores than babies who were not breast fed. But that doesn’t prove that the breast milk caused the children to be brighter. If parents with higher IQs are more likely to breastfeed, their children could have higher IQs because of heredity alone, or because of the parenting they received, apart from the milk type. Certainly, there have been millions of very bright children who have been raised on the bottle, so that the effect of breastfeeding is not likely to be terribly strong. More important is how you talk with, play with, and in other ways stimulate your baby and child. Benefits for you A Healthy baby While this is clearly a benefit for your baby, parents all agree that having a healthy
