Friday, June 6, 2008

1 out of 10 doctors recommend against breastfeeding


Why make time to go to a doctor when without leaving your keyboard, you can get cantankerous advice from an actual physician on a range of medical topics:

The medical literature abounds with evidence of the beneficial effects of breastfeeding: maternal-infant bonding, enhanced response to immunizations and higher intelligence in breastfed infants, to name just a few. I don't dispute any of this, but I would like to point out an unintended consequence that I have not seen addressed previously.

Breastfeeding is too damn expensive.

Using my family as an N of 3, we observe that the first two children, each breastfed for about a week, ended up graduating from high school in the middle of the class and went on to in-state public colleges; a highly economical way to obtain a higher education. The third child on the other hand, breastfed for two years, wound up fourth in his high school class and now attends an outrageously expensive out-of-state private university, where expenses run five times higher than those of his siblings.

Clearly the effect of enhanced intelligence from prolonged breastfeeding led directly to these ridiculous tuition bills. Even if you banked all the money saved on formula via breastfeeding, there's no way to accumulate $40,000 per year; no baby eats that much!

1 comment:

Joker said...

i didn't breast feed and my stomach is a disaster area. True drinking and eating too much crap never helped anyone, but compared to other people, I've been kind... another interesting side effect to not breast feeding, I have become a tit man and love mammaries to no avail, often wanting to just nibble while drifting to sleep.... yeah I'm sure Mrs. Joker is going to love having constant nipple hickies when we live together. oh well.