Feed the Baby

It is widely known that properly feeding your baby has effects on his or her health that do not only have an immediate effect, but can also have future consequences. Both the intrinsic nutritional value, diversity and quantity of the food are important.

One of the effects of the (quantity of) food a baby is given, is his or her fertility later in life. Research has shown that malnourished babies grow up to adults that will have few children themselves later in life. So, there seems to be a link between baby food and fertility later in life.

Into the Archives

This research was based on data from the 18th century, more specifically from church archives of 927 men and women that were born in Finland. Besides this demographic data, additional resources were used to provide historical data concerning agricultural production in the same period, specifically the harvests of rye and barley, two important food crops in this region.

These different data sets were subsequently compared.

Less Food, Low Fertility

The data showed that children, born in poor families in times of bad harvests of both crops, were less reproductively successful later in life. Half of the men and 55% of the women, that were malnourished babies, did not have any children.

On top of this, they did not get married as often as usual and if they had children, these ran a higher risk of succumbing to child mortality.

Much Food, High Fertility

In contrast, babies born during periods marked by exceptionally good harvests, knew a high reproductive success later in life. No less than 97% of the men and 95% of the women that were born during these periods of affluence turned out to have one or more children.

Considering these results, it appears to be quite obvious that the food availability and quality just after (and before) birth has a serious influence on the fertility, and thus the reproductive success, of the future generations.

References

• Discovery News (By Tim Wall, published on December21, 2010). Calorie intake as a child affects fertility later.
• New York Times (By Nicholas Bakalar, published on January 3, 2011). Patterns: When a Bumper Crop Led to a Baby Bulge.
• Rickard, I.J.; Holopainen, J.; Helama, S.; Helle, S.; Russell, A.F.& Lummaa, V. (2010). Food availability at birth limited reproductive success in historical humans. Ecology. 91(12), pp. 3515 – 3525.
• The University of Sheffield, Media Center (published December 20, 2010). Study finds food in early life affects fertility.