Study shows babies fed on demand do better at school

London: It is a debate that has raged for years, pitting mothers who follow Gina Ford and her routine-based approach to child-rearing against those who prefer the more laidback ways of Penelope Leach.

Now the battle is set to intensify as new research suggests that babies who are fed on demand do better academically than those who are fed on schedule although their mothers are more exhausted and grumpy.

The study shows that babies who are fed when they are hungry with breast milk or formula achieve higher scores in Sats tests at ages five, seven, 11 and 14, and that by the age of eight they have an IQ four to five points higher.

However, mothers who keep to scheduled feeding times score better on wellbeing measures, and report feeling more confident and less tearful.

Researchers from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex and Oxford University believe they are the first to conduct a large-scale study into the effects of scheduled versus on-demand feeding.

The research used a sample of 10,419 children born in the early 1990s, and took into account a range of background factors, including parental educational levels, family income, a child's sex and age, maternal health and parenting styles.

Dr Maria Iacovou, from the ISER, who led the research, said: "The difference between schedule and demand-fed children is found both in breast-fed and in bottle-fed babies.

Noticeable difference

The difference in IQ levels of around four to five points, though statistically highly significant, would not make a child at the bottom of the class move to the top, but it would be noticeable.

"To give a sense of the kind of difference that four or five higher IQ points might make, in a class of 30 children, for example, a child who is right in the middle of the class, ranked at 15th, might be, with an improvement of four or five IQ points, ranked higher, at about 11th or 12th in the class."

The research compared babies fed to a schedule at four weeks of age with those whose mothers tried but did not manage to feed to a schedule, and with those who were fed on demand.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd