Mothering in the UK Mothering in the UK

Two recent articles on mothering from the UK. First, we find that maybe breast feeding doesn't help with IQ, but rather that smarter mothers breast feed, and also have smarter kids, i.e., correlation and not causation.

But then, on the same day, the European Court of Justice determined that companies could discriminate against mothers who take off work to have kids on the basis of pay for length of service.

I guess this means less breast feeding since it doesn't necessarily result in a higher IQ for the kids, while the mothers now have more of a financial incentive to go back to work earlier. As if this were needed in the UK:

The UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe - almost a third of women in England and Wales never try to breastfeed, compared with just 2% in Sweden.

Of course,

The World Health Organization recommends that babies should be breastfed for at least the first two years.

Ignoring that this is impractical for most women in First World countries from a financial point of view.