The Attached Mother

If you don’t already read the Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog you might have missed their call for posts for the next Carnival of Breastfeeding. This month’s topic is pumping and expressing milk, so if you have a story to tell be sure to join in. I will be sharing my own pumping and donating story from when my oldest was still a tiny baby. Donating milk was one of the most wonderful things I did, next to breastfeeding my own son. Submissions are due by June 17th, so get to writing!

Speaking of breastfeeding, I read this interesting article in the news the other day.

Premature baby girls appear to get greater benefit from breastfeeding compared than premature baby boys, according to new research.

The study was done by looking at the hospitalization rates of boys and girls due to infections and comparing the formula fed infants to the breastfed infants. The results showed a sizable decrease in girls who were breastfed than those who were fed formula, while boys rates stayed the same. One interesting thing is that the girls, in general, seemed to be sicker than boys when not breastfed. Fifty percent of the formula fed girls had to be hospitalized due to infections, while only nineteen percent of the formula fed boys. The numbers seem to go both ways, not only are girls healthier when breastfed but they are also sicker when not.

Part of me wonders if some of those numbers stem not from actual health but from the male/female stereotypes that start as soon as birth. Boys are seen to be stronger, girls more fragile, so that girls are more likely to be taken to the hospital for infections.

Despite this apparent decline, some gender stereotyping persists and is consistent across studies. The parents in all three studies rated female newborns as finer featured than male newborns, and the parents in both the present and the Sweeney and Bradbard (1988) studies rated female newborns as more delicate than male newborns. Thus, parents seem particularly likely to perceive their female and male newborns as differing on physical characteristics. These differences were perceived even though there were no observed physical differences between the male and female infants in this or the previous studies. Via: Parents’ gender-stereotyped perceptions of newborns: the eye of the beholder revisited

It will be interesting to see if more information on this study comes to light and what can be made from it. Hopefully this will not make some mothers decide not to breastfeed their sons.

breastfeeding