Parents with shorter maternity leave quit breastfeeding sooner
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Key takeaways:
- Mothers with shorter maternity leave had lower odds of meeting current breastfeeding recommendations.
- Black or Hispanic mothers had shorter breastfeeding length or exclusivity vs. white counterparts.
Maternity leave duration has a strong positive association with breastfeeding duration for new mothers with disparities observed among different racial/ethnic groups, according to findings published in Obstetrics & Gynecology.
“Lactating parents may need additional resources to navigate return to work or lack of paid maternity leave. Any decrease in maternity leave is associated with decreased breastfeeding rates, which can contribute to the health outcomes disparities seen in maternal and child health,” Lorena Wicklund, BS, medical student at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Allison Epstein, BS, medical student at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and S. Kam Lam, MD, MPH, MS, IBCLC, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and assistant medical director of the Cleveland Clinic Breastfeeding Medicine Clinic, told Healio. “Additionally, physicians, health care workers and all stakeholders should advocate for longer paid parental leave policy.”
Wicklund and colleagues conducted a systematic review of 23 U.S.-based studies published from 2000 to 2023 from seven health care databases. All studies included data on breastfeeding duration and maternity leave length.
Overall, two of the studies were review articles. All non-review studies found a positive association between increased maternity leave and breastfeeding duration, and 95.2% of studies found a statistically significant relationship between the two variables. According to the studies, mothers who returned to work earlier after delivery had lower odds of successfully meeting current breastfeeding recommendations.
In addition, 56.5% of the evaluated studies found racial and ethnic disparities in breastfeeding. Black or Hispanic mothers had shorter breastfeeding durations or lower breastfeeding exclusivity despite being given equal maternity leave as their white counterparts.
According to Wicklund, Epstein and Lam, each additional week of maternity leave was associated with an increase of about 4 days of breastfeeding duration while returning to work before 3 months post-delivery was associated with a higher risk for early breastfeeding cessation.
“More rigorous studies rooted in retrospective or prospective methods could add to the current literature and assist health care professionals in advocating for a national, standardized paid leave policy,” Wicklund, Epstein and Lam said. “Of particular interest would be studies of organizations or states who have undergone a recent policy change increasing the amount of paid leave provided and assessing lactation outcomes in these populations before and after the change.”
For more information:
S. Kam Lam, MD, MPH, MS, IBCLC, can be reached at skl48@case.edu.