IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/19897991247-1250_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does maternal employment affect breast-feeding?

Author

Listed:
  • Kurinij, N.
  • Shiono, P.H.
  • Ezrine, S.F.
  • Rhoads, G.G.

Abstract

A prospective survey of maternal employment and breast-feeding initiation and duration was conducted among 668 Black and 511 White women who delivered their first child in Washington, DC. Ninety-one percent of White women (n = 511) and 80 percent of Black women (n = 668) reported working during pregnancy. Black women who planned to return to work part time vs full time were more likely to breast-feed rather than formula-feed (adjusted odds ratio, 2.3; 95% confidence intervals (CI) = 1.4, 3.7). Using Cox regression, Black women who returned to work had a shorter duration of breast-feeding than those not returning to work (hazard ratio = 0.5 (CI = 0.3, 0.9)). Black and White women returning to professional occupations had a longer duration of breast-feeding compared to women returning to sales or technical positions (hazard ratio for Black women = 2.4 (CI = 1.4, 4.4); hazard ratio for White women = 1.6 (CI = 1.0, 2.5)). In addition, White women in professional occupations had a longer duration of breast-feeding than women in clerical positions (hazard ratio = 1.7 (CI = 1.1, 2.6)). Until employers in the United States develop a maternity policy which does not discourage breast-feeding, the recommended six months of breast-feeding will be difficult to achieve for most employed women.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurinij, N. & Shiono, P.H. & Ezrine, S.F. & Rhoads, G.G., 1989. "Does maternal employment affect breast-feeding?," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 79(9), pages 1247-1250.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1989:79:9:1247-1250_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anita Kottwitz & Anja Oppermann & C. Katharina Spiess, 2016. "Parental leave benefits and breastfeeding in Germany: effects of the 2007 reform," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 859-890, December.
    2. Demir, Firat & Ghosh, Pallab & Liu, Zexuan, 2020. "Effects of motherhood timing, breastmilk substitutes and education on the duration of breastfeeding: Evidence from Egypt," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    3. Huang, Rui & Yang, Muzhe, 2015. "Paid maternity leave and breastfeeding practice before and after California's implementation of the nation's first paid family leave program," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 45-59.
    4. Baker, Michael & Milligan, Kevin, 2008. "Maternal employment, breastfeeding, and health: Evidence from maternity leave mandates," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 871-887, July.
    5. Julia Hatamyar, 2022. "Workplace Breastfeeding Legislation and Female Labor Force Participation in the United States," Papers 2209.05916, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1989:79:9:1247-1250_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.