母乳喂养或许可以提高子女智商和收入

Breast-feeding has well established short-term benefits, but now researchers have found that its advantages may persist into adulthood.

母乳喂养的短期效益早已得到世人公认，现在，研究人员又发现，这种优势可能会一直持续到孩子成年之后。

Many studies of breast-feeding are confounded by social factors — in the United States, for example, people of higher socioeconomic status tend to breast-feed longer. But the population in this study covered a wide-ranging socioeconomic spectrum of women who breast-fed.

许多关于母乳喂养的研究都受到了社会因素的干扰，例如，在美国，社会经济地位较高的母亲行母乳喂养的时间较长。但是，这项新研究所考察的人群涵盖了社会经济各个阶层中进行母乳喂养的女性。

The study, in the April issue of Lancet Global Health, began in 1982 with 5,914 newborns. The duration of breast-feeding and the age when the babies began eating solid foods was recorded. Thirty years later, researchers were able to interview and test 3,493 of the original group.

这项发表在《柳叶刀：全球卫生》杂志(Lancet Global Health)4月号上的研究始于1982年，涉及5914名新生儿。研究人员记录了母乳喂养的持续时间和婴儿开始食用固体食物时的年龄。30年后，当年的那些新生儿长大成人，其中3493人接受了研究人员的访谈和测试。

After controlling for maternal education and smoking, family income, birth weight and other factors, they found that at age 30, compared with people breast-fed for a month or less, those breast-fed 12 months or more had higher I.Q. scores, more years of education and higher monthly incomes.

在对母亲的受教育程度和吸烟情况、家庭收入、婴儿的出生体重和其他因素进行核验后，研究人员发现，同样是30岁，与母乳喂养不超过一个月的人相比，得到母乳喂养至少12个月的人智商得分较高，受教育年限较长，月收入也较多。

Still, the authors acknowledge that this is an observational study, and that many other unmeasured factors could have influenced their results.

不过，作者承认，这只是一项观测研究，而且许多别的不可测因素也可能会影响他们的结果。

“I don’t want to terrify people who did not breast-feed or who breast-fed for a short time,” said the lead author, Bernardo Lessa Horta, an associate professor at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil. “It isn’t only breast-feeding that affects I.Q. and income. But our study does show that breast-feeding is important and should be encouraged.”

“我不想吓到那些没有得到过母乳喂养或者母乳喂养时间很短的人，”该研究的主要作者，巴西贝罗塔斯联邦大学(Federal University of Pelotas)的副教授贝尔纳多·莱萨·奥尔塔(Bernardo Lessa Horta)说。“母乳喂养并非影响智商和收入的唯一因素。但我们的研究确实显示，母乳喂养非常重要，应予以鼓励。”