I agree and disagree with you Lara. Babies don't bond with bottles, they do
bond/attach to people. The original statement was incorret. But I disagree
that bottle feeding is the same in terms of developing the relationship as
bottle feeding. The observations that I have are from pretty extreme
circumstances, children that have been neglected or abused prior to adoption
and are then breastfed. Many of these children have been bottle fed by their
adoptive mother but initiation of breastfeeding does things for the
development of the relationship between mother and child that bottle feeding
does not. Part of this is to do with the skin to skin contact of
breastfeeding but I'm pretty sure there are other components of
breastfeeding that facilitate these changes. These children are very
sensitive, in some ways I think of them as the canary in the coal mine....
they show us stuff that is not obvious in 'normal' babies/children. However,
when it comes down to it, though breastfeeding can be highly significant by
far the most important thing in terms of developing a strong attachment
baby-mum is for the baby to experience sensitive, responsive parenting from
her mother. The limited research in this areas suggest that breastfeeding
mothers are better at this but rather than the act of breastfeeding being
the most important thing it is probable that breastfeeding mothers are more
sensitive because breastfeeding generally requires the mother to be in close
physical proximity to her baby. Having that close physical proximity (slings
are the best for this) is way way way more important than breastfeeding when
it comes to attachment.
Karleen Gribble
Australia

> This is something I wanted to say last time it came up, but I held my
> tongue. Some people here seem to be claiming that a baby fed via a
> bottle "bonds with the bottle, not with the parent". As a
> bottle-feeding mother of an exclusively breastfed six-month-old, I find
> it offensive, but that's as may be. As a scientist, I find it
> inaccurate.

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