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When One Child is Breastfed

By Melissa Clark Vickers, MEd, IBCLC

• A more productive workforce with less absenteeism caused by the need to care for sick children.
• A boost to the local economy when the money that would have gone into formula and doctor bills is put into local goods and services.
• More tax dollars to spend on something other than providing assistance for needy families to feed their children.
• The potential for a more intelligent adult who will one day be voting and/or running the community.
• Lower health care costs for both mother and baby throughout their lives which results in savings for health insurance companies.
• A role model (along with his mother) to encourage other mothers to breastfeed their babies.

• Less pollution caused by the manufacture and transport of formula.
• Less waste to dispose of in the form of tin, paper and plastic needed in the manufacture of formulas.
• A lower population growth rate, as breastfeeding prevents more births than all other forms of contraception put together.

It is no accident that the Healthy People 2000 objectives include a breastfeeding objective in both the Nutrition and the Maternal and Child Healthy priority areas: "To increase to at least 75 percent the proportion of mothers who breastfeed their babies in the early postpartum period and to at least 50 percent who continue breastfeeding until their babies are 5 to 6 months old."