Race/ethnicity, education evaluation offers better understanding of breastfeeding duration
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Key takeaways:
- Examining race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status together gives intersectional understanding of breastfeeding duration.
- High education, multi-race/other groups had the longest breastfeeding duration.
The evaluation of race/ethnicity and educational attainment combined provides a more thorough understanding of breastfeeding duration in the U.S. and can aid in informing targeted and culturally appropriate interventions, according to researchers.
“We need to center intersectional approaches in research to better understand individuals’ lived experiences when it comes to breastfeeding and infant feeding choices, because only looking at one facet of identity — racial/ethnic identity or socioeconomic status — does not tell us the whole story,” Margaret S. Butler, PhD, CLC, incoming postdoctoral fellow in the Center of Excellence in Maternal Child Health in the division of community health sciences at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois, told Healio. “There are myriad resources available for providers to educate themselves about how to talk with patients about infant feeding decisions from lens that centers intersectionality and inequities.”
Butler and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional, secondary analysis of the U.S. CDC’s 2020 National Immunization Survey-Child public-use data of a large, nationally representative sample of 5,570,405 children. Researchers created a 12-item, cross-classified variable using three maternal educational attainment groups and four racial/ethnic groups to examine breastfeeding duration.
Overall, 83.4% of children included in this sample were breastfed with a mean duration of 7.5 months of breastfeeding and a mean duration of 4.9 months of exclusive breastfeeding. Most participants were white (45%), followed by Hispanic (27.8%), multi-race/other (13.9%) and Black (13.3%). In addition, 38.3% of participants had high maternal educational attainment, 38.7% had low educational attainment and 23% had moderate educational attainment.
In this sample, Black and Hispanic participants had shorter mean breastfeeding duration (185.6 and 215.7 days, respectively) compared with other races/ethnicities. Participants who identified as multi-race/other and those who were white had the longest mean breastfeeding durations (248 and 239.44 days, respectively) compared with other races/ethnicities.
As educational attainment increased, so did breastfeeding duration, with a mean of 178.1 days for participants with low educational attainment, a mean of 212.44 days for participants with moderate educational attainment and a mean of 285.8 days for participants with high educational attainment.
Participants who identified as multi-race/other and had high educational attainment had the longest duration of breastfeeding by almost 3 weeks (beta = 19.53; 95% CI, 5.27-33.79). In addition, Black participants with low educational attainment exclusively breastfed for 1 month less than white participants with high educational attainment (beta = –30.23; 95% CI, –40.87 to –19.58).
“We need more research that employs intersectional and reproductive justice lens to understanding infant feeding, and myriad other reproductive health topics for that matter,” Butler said.