Continuing Breastfeeding With Paid Employment: Breastfeeding and Support From Women’s Informal Social Network

Abstract

Social support is essential to enable employed mothers to continue their breastfeeding practices. In Pakistan, where child daycare facilities are rare, employed women are mostly dependent on offered support from people in their social network to fulfill their child care responsibilities. The aim of this research was to study the availability of support from informal social network (spouses, mothers/mothers-in-law, and child caretaker) to employed women having babies, up to 12 months of age, and to analyze the breastfeeding practices of these mothers. This quantitative descriptive study among 200 employed women revealed that 63.5% of mothers received encouragement from people in their informal social network to enable them to continue breastfeeding with employment. Employed women received help from family members (79.5%), husbands (83.5%), and mothers/mothers-in-law (74%). Employed women who received support from their informal social network were able to sustain their breastfeeding practices as compared to women who did not receive that support or received conflicting healthcare advice from their family members.