I know that we’re all very excited about the Carnival of Maternity Leave. I wanted to share something of my own today, since August 1-7 is World Breastfeeding Week. This year’s theme is ‘Breastfeeding: A Vital Emergency Response‘. Anyone who saw the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina play out, when formula wasn’t getting through and there wasn’t clean drinking water, can imagine that breastfeeding can save lives in a situation like that. One of the aims of this week is to make everyone aware of the need to support and promote breastfeeding before an emergency even happens, since we rarely know when or where a natural disaster will strike.
Maternity leave plays a vital role in the support and protection of breastfeeding. When you are working to establish a breastfeeding relationship, it’s very important that you’re able to actually be with your baby. I’ve experienced separation from my newborn and while it is possible to pump and bottle feed it’s a less than ideal situation. I admire the commitment of moms who pump, but having been there (however briefly) I think most of us would prefer to just be able to nurse our babies. Having adequate maternity leave allows moms and babies to spend time together and get breastfeeding off to the best start.
I believe that long-term, well-funded maternity leave supports breastfeeding. But I am far from alone. Here are some science-y type references:
We can argue about how best to support and inform mothers to make the best feeding choices for them. And certainly we could go a long way towards doing a better job of providing real help to moms who are struggling. But regardless of what else we do or don’t do it’s clear that providing good, long-term, paid maternity leave is of great benefit to breastfeeding. Which is why I think that maternity leave must always come into the discussion when we talk about protecting and supporting breastfeeding in any context. It’s not just a nice thing to have, or a paid vacation, it is vital to the health and well-being of mothers and children.
Very interesting, Amber. I was shocked to see that only 28% of babies in Canada are exclusively breastfed to six months. I would have thought (hoped) that it would have been much higher. Colin and I went to Belize for 12 days when Kiaera was 10 months old. After pumping regularly for the duration of this vacation so that I could continue to breastfeed when we returned, I can definitely see why so many women stop pumping if they cannot be with their baby. It is SO much work, and far less rewarding then actually nursing your beautiful baby.
I am so glad that I live in Canada. I had a problems with breastfeeding which took about 3 months to fully heal. If I had lived in the US I don’t know what I would have done.
I think that the fact that I had a year long mat leave made breatfeeding much easier. In those early weeks when I wanted to give up I may have if I had known I was going back to work soon anyway.
Having Canadian mat leave is definitely a HUGE help for my breastfeeding career,
It would be so much harder without it.
I was working as a freelancer when I was pregnant with my first, so I have no direct experience with maternity leave, but I agree wholeheartedly with you that breastfeeding is “vital to the health and well-being of mothers and children.” IT makes sense that this should factor in to any policies made in this area.
I’m totally with you on this.
this is interesting. when we lived in london, i could not fathom why the longer mat leave (6 months) didn’t translate to better breastfeeding. people quit very quickly there.
I’m currently writing a paper about breastfeeding and how hypocritical it is for the American government to promote breastfeeding by directly targeting women and instilling guilt in those who don’t but does little to provide women with the resources to make breastfeeding a real choice. Maternity leave is a point which I thought was obvious, like the author here, but I am having trouble reconciling the fact that breastfeeding initiation rates in France are only 50% according to the LLL international. Another contributor to this forum was praising France’s maternity leave in this article:
http://www.strocel.com/maternity-leave-in-france/comment-page-1/#comment-53692
The maternity leave – breastfeeding connection doesn’t seem to be as clear-cut as I expected and I am interested in other people’s feedback on this apparent contradiction.
Most of the studies I found, and the ones I referenced here, found a correlation between breastfeeding duration and maternity leave, or successfully establishing breastfeeding and maternity leave. However, they often didn’t find a correlation between initiation rates and maternity leave.
I suspect that there are many, many factors that contribute to whether someone tries to breastfeed, how successful they are, and how long they continue. There are cultural, socio-economic and other factors that influence this, and maternity leave is only one possible factor. It can probably be overridden by societal attitudes and so on.
Here in North America, breastfeeding initiation rates are high – most people try to breastfeed. Perhaps we’ve done a better job of convincing mothers that breastfeeding is important. But then we see that rates fall off faster when mothers don’t have good support, including good maternity leave. So mothers TRY to breastfeed, but many face difficulties when they try to combine working and breastfeeding a very young baby. I suspect that in France mothers don’t have the same opinions about the importance of breastfeeding, which is why they don’t try. It would be interesting to see if the mothers who do initiate breastfeeding in France are more successful, and breastfeed for longer, than American mothers.
Also, I want to say that even if mothers DON’T breastfeed, maternity leave is still important. Having a chance to bond with your baby is so valuable, no matter how you feed him or her.