Breastfeeding boosts ability to climb social ladder

Breastfeeding not only boosts children's chances of climbing the social ladder, but it also reduces the chances of downwards mobility, suggests a large study published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood . The findings, produced by ESRC-funded researchers in the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health at UCL, are based on changes in the social class of two groups of individuals born in 1958 (17,419 people) and in 1970 (16,771 people). The researchers asked each of the children's mothers, when their child was five or seven years old, whether they had breastfed him/her. They then compared people's social class as children - based on the social class of their father when they were 10 or 11 - with their social class as adults, measured when they were 33 or 34. Social class was categorised on a four-point scale ranging from unskilled/semi-skilled manual to professional/managerial. The research also took account of a wide range of other potentially influential factors, derived from regular follow-ups every few years. These included children's brain (cognitive) development and stress scores, which were assessed using validated tests at the ages of 10-11.