Bottlefeeding mimics child loss in mothers

[Saria Dragon of the Rain Wilds]

Breasts in Mourning: How Bottle-Feeding Mimics Child Loss in Mothers' Brains: Scientific American

Breasts in Mourning: How Bottle-Feeding Mimics Child Loss in Mothers' Brains

After a successful birth, opting not to breast-feed may trigger evolved mourning behaviors

Discussions of breastfeeding versus bottle-feeding usually focus on the baby: What’s best in terms of nutrition? Or an infant’s future mental health?

But we’re going to take a different route. Let’s talk about the mother, and more specifically, the changes in her body as it readies itself to nourish a hungry newborn. With her breasts enlarged and hormones flowing, what happens if no newborn appears to suckle? How will her body—and brain—react?

First, a little background. The obvious physical changes in the pregnant human body (including swelling breasts) occur in response to escalating levels of the hormones prolactin, lactogen, estrogen, progesterone, adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and growth hormone. Placental birth serves as a sort of trigger event signaling to the mother’s body that it’s time to begin releasing milk. The baby’s physical suckling behavior—that is to say, lips tugging on teats—stimulates the first ejections, but eventually milk flow can start up by simply thinking about the baby, smelling it, or hearing it cry. “Involution,” the physiological process by which women’s breasts revert back to those dormant objects that give so much pleasure to adult human males, coincides with slowly weaning the growing infant away from breast milk and onto regular foods.

So what happens when, for whatever reason, mothers do not breastfeed their healthy infants? According to a new theory being proposed by University of Albany evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup and his colleagues, the decision to bottle-feed is tantamount, in the mother’s psyche, to mourning the loss of the child. At least, that’s how a woman’s body seems to respond to the absence of a suckling infant at its breasts in the wake of a successful childbirth. In a soon-to-be-published article in Medical Hypotheses, the authors argue that bottle-feeding simulates the unsettling ancestral condition of an infant’s death:
Opting not to breastfeed precludes and/or brings all of the processes involved in lactation to a halt. For most of human evolution the absence or early cessation of breastfeeding would have been occasioned by miscarriage, loss, or death of a child. We contend, therefore, that at the level of her basic biology a mother’s decision to bottle feed unknowingly simulates child loss.

There is at least correlational evidence to support this evolutionary claim, too. For example, in a paper presented earlier this year at the annual meeting of the Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology Society, Gallup and his colleagues reported their findings that, among a sample of 50 mothers recruited from local pediatric clinics and who had given birth in the previous 4-6 months, those who bottle fed scored significantly higher on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale than breastfeeders did. This effect panned out even after controlling for the mother’s age, education, income and relationship status with her current partner.

Another telling finding to emerge was that the bottle-feeding mothers reported wanting to hold their babies significantly more than the breastfeeders did, which the authors believe:
...parallels findings among nonhuman primates where in response to the death of an infant, mothers of some species have been known to tenaciously hold, cling to, and carry their infants for prolonged periods after they die.

It’s an interesting (if morbid) idea that bottle-feeders are implicitly conceptualizing their babies as corpses, but there are plenty of alternative interpretations. For example, these women may simply want to make up for lost bonding time that would otherwise occur during breastfeeding. In any event, if Gallup’s theory about the “unnaturalness” of bottle-feeding simulating child loss holds up in future studies, it would have obvious, and important, clinical applications. This would also be an excellent example of how evolutionary psychological explanations of human behavior can improve the quality of human life. Of course the reasons for bottle-feeding are complex and many, and not all women have the luxury of a choice in this regard. But for those who do, the present logic may give new meaning to the expression “breast is best”—if not for infants, then at least for their mothers.

I'm a supporter of breastfeeding. It is exactly what we were built to do, and with the proper support and guidance, almost every mother and baby should be able to exclusively breastfeed. Of course, this isn't how it always works out, but culturally, we're seeing a strange mentality that breastfeeding is "harder" than bottlefeeding (yeah right) or embarrassing.

If this study is correct, there's a huge of implication for the rise in postnatal depression and bonding issues people are experiencing with their babies. If nothing else, getting this information out there might help people choose to breastfeed more and more frequently. The benefits are undeniable as is, but it looks like the whole thing goes deeper again.

[Deku Trii]

Breastfeeding always seemed like the objectively better way to go about it. I'm pretty sure that's what my wife plans to do when the time comes.

[ZeldaGirl]

For the life of me, I really don't understand the push back against breastfeeding - but for whatever reason, it seems that so many people are averse to it, finding it 'inappropriate' or unnecessary. Good grief.

[Loot]

I can only assume the bottle push is because people want to censor real life. Well they're all a bunch of meanie-jerks.

Really fascinating find, if not slightly morbid as the article says.

[Saria Dragon of the Rain Wilds]

Don't forget the absolutely massive monetary motives the formula companies have behind them.

There was a huge boycott of Nestle because of their efforts in "convincing" the mothers of certain third world countries into believing they needed to feed their babies formula. Of course, that led to instances of the mothers mixing it with unclean water and being unable to sterilise the bottles, etc, properly, or diluting it too far and causing even worse malnutrition since they simply couldn't afford to keep buying the full supply of formula.

[CuccoLady]

I've never even considered bottle-feeding [for when that time comes in the hopefully nice and distant future]. It seems stupid to me that breast-feeding should be conceived as wrong somehow. It's what we were meant to do.

Breastmilk supplies babies with immunity and nutrition. This article just tops off the list to why breast is best.

-shrug-

[I know that in France, it's very looked-down-upon to breastfeed, so pretty much every baby isn't even allowed outdoors until it's grown a few months so it doesn't get sick]

[Booyakasha]

I can understand moving to formula eventually. Like, after four to six months on the tit. That's what my sister did with her kids. To nevermind breastfeeding altogether, though...you know, if nothing else, it's confounded wasteful. You're producing the stuff anyway, might as well make use of it. I'll not claim there's nothing to be said for formula, but if a woman has a healthy diet, her output should suffice for a newborn's nutritional needs.

[Saria Dragon of the Rain Wilds]

Actually, Boo, a woman has to be suffering severe malnutrition for her breastmilk to be anything less than perfect for her child, nutritionally. A woman's body will put more into the production of milk than it will take for itself until such a point that it would become deadly to do so. An unhealthy diet in the mother won't make formula "better" for a baby than breastmilk.

As for switching to formula, there's always benefit to breastfeeding, and all the same reasons for why it's easier and healthier continue to apply throughout the entire length of milk feeds. There's nothing wrong with a child having breastmilk up to, and beyond 3 years of age (by which time, MOST children will naturally ween from milk feeds altogether). If it's something of a time/work commitment thing, expressing breastmilk to be used in a bottle is good for mother and child and saves a tonne of money in buying formula.

[Booyakasha]

Well, fine, then. I've learned.

[Sabrilocke]

Originally Posted by Saria Dragon of the Rain Wilds

Don't forget the absolutely massive monetary motives the formula companies have behind them.

If it weren't against the rules, I'd make dupe accounts just to click the "Thanks" button on each of them. I couldn't agree more.