Your good friend tells you that she is going to breast-feed for as long as she can, no matter how hard it is when she returns to work because "she knows that breast-fed babies are smarter."

She says that she would feel guilty if she stopped before her baby turned one because she would be "disadvantaging her child." How could you explain the research in such a way that she would feel better about her decision if she chose to stop breast-feeding after a couple of months?

What will be an ideal response?

Answer: Research has shown that breast-feeding is correlated with a number of positive outcomes, such as higher intelligence in offspring. However, correlation does not imply causation. It could be that differences in outcomes could be due to differences in the mothers' education and the quality of the environment that comes along with a higher SES. Studies have tried to take these differences into account statistically, but they are still confounded. Furthermore, even if some studies have found the IQ to be even a few points higher among those children who were breast-fed, IQ is not the only determinant of success.