[West Ender]

You can use statistics to prove any point, if you try hard enough. I don't believe breastfeeding will make enough difference to matter where IQ is concerned.

Take my children. I breastfed my son and my younger daughter for a couple of months each but my elder daughter, my first child, was only breastfed for 3 weeks as I became ill and couldn't continue. All 3 of them are very intelligent but it's my elder daughter who was the most academically gifted, taking O and A levels in her stride where the other 2 had to work that bit harder to achieve results.

My elder daughter has a son and she didn't breastfeed him for more than a couple of weeks. He got a bursary to Manchester Grammar School where he got 9 GCSEs (5 A and 4 A*) and 3 A levels, did a B Tech at college and is now at Salford Uni doing a BA. My granddaughter, only 8 years old, wasn't breastfed at all, due to physical problems with her mum (my younger daughter), but is showing every sign of being as clever as her cousin.

I think intelligence is part inherited and part the result of environment. I certainly don't think that any mother who doesn't breastfeed, for whatever reason, should beat herself up with worry that she has made her child less intelligent. It's a lot of nonsense.