I think the real question is “Would you eat babies?”…

Note that the link between breastfeeding and IQ is important not only because of the significance of 6 IQ points, but also because we know of very few other interventions that can similarly boost intellectual ability.

“She is saying that she had a very human reaction of seething”

Oh no, I don’t think she was being sarcastic. No, I did not misread her. Rather you can’t seem to see the not-very-subtext that is whacking you upside the head.

You see, this is why so many OB readers don’t seem to have successful relationships. Many appear to lack understanding of what constitutes dysfunctional behavior.

“Seething” is not a functional relationship strategy. It may be human, but it will destroy your love and respect for one another in an acid sea of resentment.

Don’t “seethe” in your relationships. If you can’t talk about X right there on the spot, respectfully and with tenderness, you’re screwed. Or rather, you won’t be. Ask anyone who’s been married, oh 10 or 20 years.

Resenting your husband and writing about it in national magazines isn’t my suggested way to go. It’s the airing the ugly resentment she has carefully stored for such a monetary occasion – look! how humorous, how self-deprecating! – that indicates lack of respect for her husband as a human being. It’s a tantrum, and we all know about tantrums. Don’t try this at home, ok?

Resenting your husband for the choices you have made and your inability or refusal to communicate your issues around them shows a lack of maturity, a lack of accepting responsibility for your own behavior. This is repulsive man-hating victim feminism in a not-so-subtle form.

She is saying that she had a very human reaction of seething when she was working in the middle of the night while the person next to her slumbered, but that she saw good reasons for why it should be that way. As a male who doesn’t like to be roused in the middle of the night, I can easily understand her irritation at watching her husband sleep while she has to get up. The irritation may not be rational, but I certainly don’t think that her feeling it implies that she doesn’t have “any respect for [her] husband as a human being.”

It invalidates the blinding, not the randomization! It seems like a pretty small problem (every study has problems), though the cherry-picking multiple measures of IQ is a big problem.

The two clearest benefits I remeber about breast feeding are reduced infections (Breast milk provides immunity to baby, by passing moms immunoglobulins on) and pair-bonding for mom and baby. Benefits to Mom and Baby are clearly summarized, along with the controversies surrounding cognitive improvement in UpToDate review articles.

As many other people have pointed out – Robin can’t be bothered to read the medical literature. He can’t be bothered to find a review. He just doesn’t want to hear contradictory evidence — god help anyone who listens to Robin’s medical advice.

For the billionth time — get a damn subscription to uptodate and read the review article before you even try to contradict anything. The review articles cite the primary literature AND the problems with the studies as well as the argument for current medical thinking.

To demonstrate how LAZY and reckless you are, I just want to highlight what happened when I went to UpToDate. For those not familiar — uptodate is the equivalent of google for medicine. In any other setting You caa’t make an argument against a popularly held belief without bothering to google counter arguments. So, I put breast feeding in the search box, and 3 of the top 10 results are
1.) Maternal and economic benefits of breastfeeding
2.) Infant benefits of breastfeeding
3.) The impact of breastfeeding on the development of allergic disease

Each of these reviews has over 50 references. Here is an excert on the part on cognitive development:

A number of studies have shown small neurodevelopmental advantages in children who were breast-fed compared to those who received formula, as illustrated below:
Cognitive development — Although there have been several reports that breastfeeding improves cognitive development later in childhood and adolescence to breastfeeding [76-79], this association remains uncertain [80].

“6 points”

“Trasande et al. used a value for lifetime earnings (in 2000 dollars) of $1,032,002 for males and $763,468 for females based on the work of Max et al. (2004). . . .Both the U.S. EPA and Trasande use the work of Salkever (1995) to estimate the effect that one IQ point decrement has on earnings. Because the Trasande earnings are sex specific, the authors use Salkever’s sex-specific results. For each IQ point decrement, males experience a 1.93% decrease in lifetime earnings and females experience a 3.23% decrease.”

– US EPA study on effects of IQ detriment due to mercury poisoning in children.

6 IQ points = about US$120K? Check my math, please.

But seriously, you all need to read the whole article. The chick is not actually be-otching about breastfeeding – that’s an excuse. Read it with skirt-eyes and pay attention to the inter-text.

It’s filled with rage against her husband, what she perceives as inequality in her marriage. The kids & breast-feeding is really an excuse to beat her husband with a stick in public. The nut graf:

“About seven years ago, I met a woman from Montreal, the sister-in-law of a friend, who was young and healthy and normal in every way, except that she refused to breast-feed her children. She wasn’t working at the time. She just felt that breast-feeding would set up an unequal dynamic in her marriage — one in which the mother, who was responsible for the very sustenance of the infant, would naturally become responsible for everything else as well. At the time, I had only one young child, so I thought she was a kooky Canadian — and selfish and irresponsible. But of course now I know she was right. I recalled her with sisterly love a few months ago, at three in the morning, when I was propped up in bed for the second time that night with my new baby (note the my). My husband acknowledged the ripple in the nighttime peace with a grunt, and that’s about it. And why should he do more? There’s no use in both of us being a wreck in the morning. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to seethe.”

Yikes! Um, Ms. Rosin, if you actually stopped whining like a wimpy victim about the choices you yourself have made, accepting that you were a full moral agent, and further if you had any respect for your husband as a human being – you would just hire a nanny, get thee to couples counseling, and thus not have to castrate him in public to express your scary anger.

Articles like this make me really ashamed to be a heterosexual feminist sometimes.