In case you missed the headlines - Breastfed kids enjoy greater social mobility than bottle-fed children - Breastfeeding helps children up the social ladder - researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK followed 3182 babies born from 1937 to 1939.

They reported that breastfed children were 41 percent more likely to achieve a higher social class as adults than children who were formula-fed - Breastfeeding in infancy and social mobility: 60-year follow-up of the Boyd Orr cohort.

Initial data was collected by survey administered at 16 centers in England and Scotland when the subjects were on average 7 years of age. Subjects were coded as ever breastfed, exclusively breastfed, or formula-fed. Later data was collected by follow-up questionaires between 1997 and 1998.

The authors clearly state that the results should be interpreted with caution.

(1) It remains possible that mothers from that era who chose to breastfeed their children differed from those who did not with respect to factors associated with improved occupational prospects. As such, breastfeeding may simply be a marker for other factors that explain upward social mobility.

(2) Only 44 percent (1414) of the 3182 potentially eligible participants were included in the analysis.

(3) While the odds of upward social mobility was highly significant, both the relative and absolute effect estimates in subjects breastfed versus those bottle-fed were modest.

(4) Reverse causality could explain the results, if some of the breastfed babies differed from the bottle-fed babies by perinatal factors associated with later socioeconomic status.

So a word of caution: Don’t get so caught up in the headlines that you forget to read the fine print. If you would like a little humor to lighten the discourse, you might want to read Fiona McCade’s commentary in The Scotsman.