Breastfeeding, Cognitive and Noncognitive Development in Early Childhood: A Population Study

Participants

Participants included families enrolled in the Growing Up in Ireland infant cohort. Families with infants born between December 2007 and May 2008 were identified from the Child Benefit Register and randomly selected to participate. The overall recruitment response rate was 65% (N = 11 134). A detailed description of the study design can be found elsewhere.³⁰ We used data collected at 9 months and 3 and 5 years of age. Only families with complete data for all confounders when children were 9 months and children who were born full term were included (N = 9854; 88.5% of the initial sample). Boys represented 50.6% (N = 4991) of the sample. Attrition across waves reduced the sample size to 8715 children at 3 years and 8032 at 5 years. Some children had missing data on the cognitive and vocabulary scales, resulting in 8535 and 8241 children respectively at age 3 and 7972 and 7942 children respectively at age 5. Additionally, missing teacher reports for behavior at age 5 years resulted in 7478 children being included in these analyses. Demographic characteristics of the families and rates of breastfeeding engagement can be found in Table 1 and Fig 1. Ethics approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee, Department of Children and Youth Affairs Ireland, and written consent was collected from parents/guardians before data collection.

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FIGURE 1

The category “1” on the x-axis represents breastfeeding up to 31 days; “2” represents between 32 and 180 days; and “3” represents ≥181 days.

Measures

Children’s cognitive abilities and expressive vocabulary were measured by using 2 scales from the British Abilities Scale³¹. The pictures similarities scale assessed problem-solving skills and the naming vocabulary scale assessed expressive vocabulary. The construct validity of each scale was derived by using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised (r = 0.74 and 0.83, respectively).³¹ Standardized scores that adjusted for performance as compared with other children of the same age, with a mean of 50 and a SD of 10, were used. Age was adjusted in 3-month age bands.

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ³²) was used to assess children’s problem behaviors. The parent version was used at age 3 years and both the parent and teacher versions were used at age 5 years. The SDQ is comprised of 5 scales (emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems, and prosocial behavior) with ratings of applicability of behaviors on a 3-point scale. A total difficulties scale is included, combining the 4 problem scales, to yield an overall difficulties score. We used the conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, and difficulties scales given our focus on externalizing problems. Validation of the SDQ has been extensively documented.³³ Table 2 reports the correlations between parent and teacher SDQ reports and the means and SDs for all child outcomes.

Breastfeeding information was collected retrospectively when infants were 9 months old via maternal report. Support for the reliability of recall in previous breastfeeding studies has been established.³⁴ However, given the lower reliability regarding the timing of the introduction of additional fluids/solids, Labbok and Krasovec’s definition of full (ie, exclusive or almost exclusive) and partial breastfeeding are used.³⁵ Two breastfeeding variables were created to assess whether the infant was fully or partially breastfed and the duration of each. Mothers were asked 4 questions: “Was <baby> ever breastfed,” “How old was <baby> when he/she completely stopped being breastfed,” “Was <baby> ever exclusively breastfed,” and “How old was <baby> when he/she completely stopped being exclusively breastfed?” First, infants were grouped by breastfeeding status, both full and partial (5940) and never breastfed (3914). Of those who had ever been breastfed, 4795 had full breastfeeding at some point. Next, breastfeeding duration was grouped into 3 intervals; breastfed up to 31 days, 32 to 180 days, and ≥181 days. Each category of duration was treated as mutually exclusive, dummy coded, and compared against infants who had never been breastfed for the purpose of matching.

Confounders have been suggested in part to account for the associations found between breastfeeding and child outcomes. We matched groups (breastfed, never breastfed) on 14 of the most pertinent factors. At the child level, factors included sex (boy/girl), birth weight (≥2500 g), and having neonatal intensive care (yes/no). At the maternal level, factors included age (≤24 years, 25–29 years, 30–34 years, or ≥35 years), highest level of education (primary level/no education, second level, or third level), working status before pregnancy (yes/no), ethnicity (Irish, any other white background, African or any other black background, Asian background, or other, including mixed background), depression (a score of ≥11 on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale), and type of delivery (vaginal or caesarean). Family-level factors included having a partner in the residence (yes/no), social class (professional/managerial, other nonmanual/skilled manual, or semiskilled/unskilled), medical card status (free medical care, free general practitioner care, or no free medical care), total number of household members who smoked during the pregnancy (none, or ≥1), and whether the cohort infant had siblings living in the household.

Statistical Analysis

PSM reduces selection bias by matching children who were breastfed to children who were not, but who had a similar probability of being breastfed based on their measured characteristics. We used PSM logit models with nearest neighbor 1:1 matching techniques. In nearest neighbor matching, the sample is randomly ordered with matching occurring sequentially between the treatment (breastfed) and control (not breastfed) group based on participants’ propensity scores. Typically, the pair is then removed from the list and the next match is created. To ensure optimal matches, we imposed a caliper so that pairs could only be matched if the propensity score was within a tenth of a SD of the other. We also allowed matching with replacement given the low rates of longer durations and full breastfeeding in this cohort. Although matching with replacement has been argued to increase variance in the data, it also arguably reduces bias in the sample by ensuring better quality of matches.³⁶ Balance checks in all models revealed substantial reductions of bias between matched groups on all individual confounders (ie, 0%–13.9% remaining bias in partial breastfeeding models, 0%–18.1% remaining bias in full models; data available on request). The remaining overall mean bias across models ranged from 3.2% to 8.5%. The ≤20% remaining bias has been suggested as the acceptable cutoff after matching.³⁷ Thus, we concluded that the analytic matching technique resulted in good matches between conditions. Matching resulted in all participants falling within the area of common support. The average treatment effect on those who were treated (ie, children who were breastfed) is reported. Adjustments were made for multiple hypothesis testing by using the Holmes-Bonferroni method. All statistical analyses for PSM were conducted by using Stata version 13 software (Stata Corp, College Station, TX).

To note, although PSM is advantageous in mimicking random assignment, a drawback is the challenge in evaluating a linear dose-response association, which has previously been found. Structural equation modeling (SEM) offers an alternative approach to examining this dose-response association. Additionally, SEM uses the full sample and has greater power. Thus, the data were also modeled by using SEM, where confounders were treated as correlated exogenous variables, the duration of breastfeeding was treated as a continuous mediating variable, and child outcomes were treated as correlated, which could be influenced by both breastfeeding and confounders. These results can be found in the Supplemental Material.