In their words,
They conclude:In Table 3, we present descriptive statistics by breastfeeding status (yes/no) for the eleven outcomes of interest across...different subgroups – the full NLSY-Children’s sample...and the discordant sibling sample...[In the first sample] Mean levels of BMI, hyperactivity, math skills, reading recognition, vocabulary word identification, digit recollection, and scholastic competence as well as the percentage of respondents who are obese all appear to significantly (p < 0.05) differ between children who were breastfed and those who were not and are in the predicted direction, with breastfed children exhibiting better outcomes. When the sample is restricted to discordant siblings, mean scores across all eleven indicators of child health and wellbeing are comparable and differences between breast- and bottle-fed respondents are small enough to be attributable to random chance alone.
Basically, every woman who wants to breastfeed should be able to, and every woman who wants to formula feed should be able to do so without feeling like she's hurting her child or her relationship with her child somehow, because she's not. You're just as good of a mom whichever way you feed your baby.Efforts to increase breastfeeding that solely focus on individually based behavior change without addressing the economic and social realities women face and the difficult tradeoffs they are forced to make in the months following the birth of their child risk alienating and stigmatizing the very women they hope to help… A truly comprehensive approach to increasing breastfeeding in the U.S., with a particular focus on reducing racial and SES disparities, will need to work toward increasing and improving parental leave policies, flexible work schedules and health benefits even for low-wage workers, and access to high quality child care that can ease the transition back to work for both mother and child. Hopefully, this multifaceted approach will allow women who want to breastfeed to do so for as long as possible without promoting a cult of “total motherhood” in which women’s identities are solely constructed in terms of providing the best possible opportunities for their children and the risks associated with a failure to breastfeed are drastically overstated (Wolf, 2011).
That's not to say there are no benefits to breastfeeding - there do seem to be short-term benefits to babies (less ear infections, a couple less colds), and possibly some long-term benefits to mothers (possibly less breast cancer). The greatest benefits of breastfeeding are absolutely to those in developing countries - solely breastfeeding a child protects that child from water-borne illnesses that could be introduced in unclean water mixed with formula. This is why the WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life - to protect children in developing countries. But with the clean water we have in the US, the long-term benefits of breastfeeding to the babies themselves seem to be greatly exaggerated.
*edited for spelling*