Effects of work-related factors on the breastfeeding behavior of working mothers in a Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer: a cross-sectional survey

BACKGROUND: In recent years, the creation of supportive environments for encouraging mothers to breastfeed their children has emerged as a key health issue for women and children. The provision of lactation rooms and breast pumping breaks have helped mothers to continue breastfeeding after returning to work, but their effectiveness is uncertain. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of worksite breastfeeding-friendly policies and work-related factors on the behaviour of working mothers. METHODS: This study was conducted at a large Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer in August-September 2003. Questionnaires were used to collect data on female employees' breastfeeding behaviour, child rearing and work status when raising their most recently born child. A total of 998 valid questionnaires were collected, giving a response rate of 75.3%. RESULTS: The results showed that 66.9% of survey respondents breastfed initially during their maternity leave, which averaged 56 days. Despite the provision of lactation rooms and breast pumping breaks, only 10.6% mothers continued to breastfeed after returning to work, primarily office workers and those who were aware of their company's breastfeeding-friendly policies. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, breastfeeding-friendly policies can significantly affect breastfeeding behaviour. However, an unfavourable working environment, especially for fab workers, can make it difficult to implement breastfeeding measures. With health professionals emphasizing that the importance of breastfeeding for infant health, and as only females can perform lactation, it is vital that women's work "productive role" and family "reproductive role" be respected and accommodated by society

How well do European child-related leave policies support the caring role of fathers?

Our chapter analyses the extent to which European countries (1) recognize the caring responsibilities of fathers toward their children and (2) value fathers' caring role. To do so, we analyze the designs of individual leave policies and reflect on them by assessing available data on leave uptake by fathers in 13 European countries. Our results show that there is great variation in child-related leave designs across Europe. Our findings, in line with previous work, underscore the importance of generous individual non-transferable leave entitlements. Moreover, our findings bring forward aspects of leave designs that are rarely discussed when considering fathers' leave uptake. Our results indicate that generous non-transferable leave rights should be paired with (a) clearly defined leave periods for fathers, (b) individual entitlement to benefits, and (c) greater scope for flexibility to increase the attractiveness of child-related leave and to strengthen fathers' position when negotiating their childcare leave.</p

The Happiest Kids on Earth : Gender Equality and Adolescent Life Satisfaction in Europe and North America

Cross-national differences in adolescent life satisfaction in Europe and North America are consistent, but remain poorly understood. While previous studies have predominantly focused on the explanatory role of economic factors, such as national wealth and income equality, they revealed weak associations, at most. This study examines whether societal gender equality can explain the observed cross-national variability in adolescent life satisfaction. Based on the assumption that gender equality fosters a supportive social context, for example within families through a more equal involvement of fathers and mothers in child care tasks, adolescent life satisfaction was expected to be higher in more gender-equal countries. To test this hypothesis, national-level data of gender equality (i.e., women’s share in political participation, decision making power, economic participation and command over resources) were linked to data from 175,470 adolescents aged 11–16 years old (Mage = 13.6, SD = 1.64, 52% girls) from 34 European and North American countries involved in the 2009/10 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. Results of linear multilevel regression analyses indicate that adolescents in countries with relatively high levels of gender equality report higher life satisfaction than their peers in countries with lower levels of gender equality. The association between gender equality and adolescent life satisfaction remained significant after controlling for national wealth and income equality. It was equally strong for boys and girls. Moreover, the association between gender equality and life satisfaction was explained by social support in the family, peer and school context. This analysis suggests that gender equality fosters social support among members of a society, which in turn contributes to adolescent life satisfaction. Thus, promoting gender equality is likely to benefit all members of a society; not just by giving equal rights to women and girls, but also by fostering a supportive social climate for all

Shifting identities: social and cultural factors that shape decision making around sustaining breastfeeding

In the UK, women’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours around breastfeeding are shaped by myriad influences and by changing social and structural factors and cultural mores. Whilst public health discourse equates breastfeeding with ‘good mothering’ and health professionals emphasise ‘breast as best’, these normative values compete with other standards or criteria of ‘good mothering’ held by others within women’s social networks that exert influence on them. Moreover, cultural and structural factors affecting the pattern of women’s labour market participation, specifically public policy emphasis on return to paid work aligned with policies directed at reconciling work and family act as constraints on sustaining optimal breastfeeding i.e. exclusive breastfeeding for six months as advised by the World Health Organisation (2003). For women in this study, initiating and sustaining breastfeeding was subject of a complex process that contributed to multiple valued outcomes: nurturing thriving and healthy babies, experiencing themselves as ‘competent’ mothers, successfully managing shifting identities and negotiating competing pressures in the real life context of their daily lives and relationships with ‘significant others’. Even as women struggled to present and see themselves as ‘good mothers’, they were active agents and not just acted upon. They sought to reconcile the value they placed on breastfeeding with seeing themselves and being seen by others as ‘good mothers’. Thus, they sought out situations where breastfeeding was highly valued (such as support groups), and developed strategies to counter or avoid threats to their sense of themselves as nurturing and competent mothers that was related to, but not synonymous with sustaining breastfeeding. Midwives and health visitors in this study encouraged women to breastfeed but not in the way that this is generally portrayed in much of the current literature. Analysis of observed interactions between women who had chosen to breastfeed and midwives and health visitors suggests more of a negotiated encounter in which these health professional considered the whole situation of the woman and her struggle to be a ‘good mother’

Medicalization and women's knowledge: the construction of understandings of infant feeding experiences in post-WW II New Zealand

For most of the twentieth century infant feeding knowledge has been constructed by medical scientists and health professionals. However, for a short time around the 1970s, New Zealand women (re)claimed the power to author their own knowledge based upon experience. This coincided with a dramatic return to breastfeeding on a national scale. Using New Zealand women's narratives of their infant feeding experiences over the past 50 years, this article brings to the foreground the importance of women's subjective construction of knowledge, their positioning within it, and the suppression of rudimentary discourses when that power is removed or relinquished in the process of remedicalization