[drivebyhooting]

Not just literacy but everything is significantly affected by the care rendered from 0 to 4. My concern was broader: the children’s and society’s future.

By your own admission, a father cannot alone provide care for an infant. And if there are siblings then the critical time period will stretch - perhaps to 3 or 4 years.

Apparently the eldest would be reading chapter books by then, according to other comments in this thread. But I do not understand it.

It is a bitter choice. For mothers to have a life outside of motherhood it is the children who are deprived.

[iteria]

Fathers can't care for an infant alone? Damn shame that every single child with a mother who died in child birth never survived to adulthood. Damn shame. Also, just so tragic that a gay couple will never know the joy of raise a child from infancy. Pete Buttigieg has a hell of a fine imitation of an infant.

Cmon what you are saying is 100% false. Men are 100% capable of caring for infants and toddlers. Formula exists and there has been no large scale study that has shown a significant long term impact for formula usage. All benefits of breastfeeding are minor or unable to be separated from characteristics of the mother.

Women entering the workforce is not the death of child achievement. It is not even parents having time since there was only an extremely narrow window where the one parent household was a thing and it wasn't even the majority of the population. Income has always correlated with achievement and wealthy parents pay money for their child's enrichment not particularly engage with the children themselves. There are kindergarteners at my kid's school in tutoring to get them ahead. These kids are not even behind. That's not the mother spending time on their kid that's boosting the test scores in my district. It's wealth.

[drivebyhooting]

There are plenty of studies. Formula is convenient but it is deficient. If it were such a perfect replacement, why do parents go to such length as breast feed, pump, or get donor milk?

Breast feeding increases IQ: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26211556/

Formula causes obesity and diabetes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2812877/

Breast feeding decreases infant mortality: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1...

You can do more of your own research if you want to be convinced. You can ignore it if you don’t like the sound of it.

[tptacek]

Because American culture has for 30 years told them to do so. It may be a valid impulse or it may not be but it's not evidence in itself.

[drivebyhooting]

Did you look at my references?