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The study doesn’t look at the effects of care by a childminder, but this article does make me feel that it is a much better alternative for a small child.
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Apparently a drop or two in the eye will cure conjunctivitis.
links for 2007-04-06
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I suspect that a child’s behaviour is the result of a number of factors – the quality of the nursery or childminder (our childminder is a walking wonder and Tom loves her to bits, but I’m sure there are lousy childminders and wonderful nurseries) is surely only one part of the equation. Even if the child is there (like Tom) for eight or nine hours per day (albeit he goes for only two days a week), they are still in the care of the parents for far longer each day. I wonder if it all reflects a general level of care and attention from the parents.
While I understand there is an ecological impact with bottlefeeding, I don’t for the life of me understand what point that report is getting at. A mother isn’t likely to consider breastfeeding on the ecological values if she has already dismissed the health benefits to herself and her baby but neither can a bottle-feeding mother say ‘Holy Cow, I’m chucking away a tin a week here. I’ll start breastfeeding right now!’.
And the whole thing about the sanitary waste is a bit bemusing as well – the ecologically minded will already have seeked out the alternatives to standard sanitary protection whenever her period returns – and what about disposable breastpads?!!
I’m all for making a difference and reducing our waste – I recycle all our babymilk tins as gift boxes or storage – but I can’t help but feeling this report just smacks of ‘and another thing that bottlefeeders do is destroy the planet …’
I would also dispute that ’99% of women can breastfeed’ statistic. I think there is a big difference between ‘can produce some milk’ and ‘produce enough to keep herself and her baby healthy’ (both physically and mentally). In previous centuries mothers that couldn’t make the cut would lose their infants. Let us rejoice then that there is bottlefeeding is there to assist and keep these precious babies alive.