Early this month, the Centers for Disease Control released a study analyzing breastfeeding in America, noting that the percentage of babies who were breastfed increased by four points from 2000 to 2008.
But the study showed that less than half of women were still breastfeeding after six months, the period recommended by American pediatricians. This is likely because doing so after returning to work is difficult (as my wife is experiencing now) for mothers.
Slate has more:
Breast-feeding increased across all racial groups as well, though black women still lag far behind Latinos and white women. Over 75 percent of both white and Latino infants who were born in 2008 were breast-fed, while the number of black infants breast-fed the same year was under 60 percent. Researchers checked back in with moms of 2008 babies at six and nine months, and at both points the percentage of black babies breast-feeding was much lower than the percentage of white and Latino babies.
These simple slopegraphs attempt to show the trends using the CDC’s data:
