The role of early years care providers in supporting continued breastfeeding and breast milk feeding

Abstract

This paper discusses challenges faced by mothers who seek to continue breastfeeding and/or breast milk feeding (B/BMF) whilst using daytime childcare, and early years’ practitioners’ attitudes towards their role in the support of these feeding practices. The data-set being reported comes from a small-scale feasibility study that was conducted in the summer of 2015 at a childcare provider site in a highly deprived urban area of Scotland. Focus groups with B/BMF mothers, as well as with early years’ practitioners were conducted. We report data pertaining to where responsibility lies for facilitating continued B/BMF, and on the perception of practitioners’ attitudes, knowledge about, skills and providers’ facilities for B/BMF. We recommend that care providers actively engage prospective parents in a discussion about how they can support continued B/BMF. These original data are contextualised and critically discussed within the wider literature with special attention being paid to the concept of unintended consequences.

Keywords:

• Breastfeeding
• breast milk
• childcare
• early years

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the University of the West of Scotland.

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the help of Lindsay McKie, Research Assistant, in collecting data for this project.