Professional Mothers and Breast Feeding Practices

Abstract

While counseling mothers about exclusive breast feeding; we usually ignore the relationship between maternal employment and infant feeding practices and knowledge about lactation. The study was conducted on 200 employed and 200 non employed women. Breast feeding practices are greatly influenced by the employment of mother with 85.4% non-employed mothers and 41.2% employed women going in for exclusive breast feeding in first four months (p<O.OO2). Similarly, 38.8% employed ladies started combined breast and bottle feeding since birth (P<0.0015). The parity and socioeconomic status did not change feeding practices. The knowledge and information of breast feeding and weaning was better ¡n employed women than their unemployed counterparts (36.1% Vs 21.7%; P<O.O1).Higher social class tended to be more aware (56.7% vs 15.3% p<O.OO1). The primpiparas had less knowledge than nulliparas (23.5% vs 34.8%, P<O.O1).