Category: Community & Workplace Support

Breastfeeding in the United States: Empowering Mothers Through Paid Leave

Solianna Meaza, Interim Initiative Director at 1,000 Days of FHI 360, bonding with her firstborn during maternity leave.

 

By Solianna Meaza, Interim Initiative Director at 1,000 Days of FHI 360

In recent years, the United States has made progress in recognizing the critical role of breastfeeding in infant health and development. Central to this progress is the support provided by paid leave policies, which empower parents who choose to breastfeed the time and stability to breastfeed their children and promote a healthier start to life.

The benefits and challenges of breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is widely acknowledged as the optimal nutrition for children, providing essential nutrients, antibodies, and bonding opportunities crucial for their growth and development. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, with continued breastfeeding alongside complementary foods for at least one year.

But breastfeeding is not a one-person job, and it doesn’t just happen. It requires encouragement and support from skilled counselors, family members, healthcare providers, employers, policymakers and others.

One of the most common reasons that breastfeeding is stopped early is the necessity to return to work and/or the lack of support received in the workplace. In the U.S., 79% of babies are breastfed at one month. However, this rate drops drastically in the first few months of life and by 6 months, only about half of infants receive any breast milk and just 25% receive breast milk exclusively.

This dramatic drop in breastfeeding rates can be directly linked to our lack of paid parental leave.

Research shows that maternity leave is critical to enabling early, exclusive and continued breastfeeding. The World Health Organization states that establishing and maintaining exclusive breastfeeding requires that all working mothers have access to at least 18 weeks, and preferably 6 months or more, of paid maternity leave. Today’s reality is vastly off target: on average, new mothers in the United States take 10 weeks of maternity leave, of which four weeks are covered through paid sick or personal time, with the rest unpaid. Paternity leave is also crucial as a support to mothers in recovery and breastfeeding and to allow for bonding and transition. There, the U.S. lags too: the average leave of non-birthing parents is just one week.

As the only wealthy country without universal paid family or medical leave coverage, the U.S. is a global outlier on paid leave. The majority of American families are forced to cut short their recovery, transition, and bonding time, all of which is crucial to establishing breastfeeding and supporting child and maternal health. In addition to early cessation of breastfeeding, having scarce or no paid leave contributes to serious health burdens, including delaying babies’ immunizations. Without the stability of paid family leave, mothers have higher financial pressures and increased stress, which leads to increased rates of postpartum depression symptoms.

As awareness grows about the benefits of breastfeeding and the importance of paid leave, policies are slowly improving. There’s a growing number of states that offer mandatory paid family leave systems: thirteen states and Washington, D.C. now offer partial wage replacement to workers in businesses of all sizes, with an additional nine states having voluntary systems that provide paid family leave through private insurance. But most families in the U.S. remain unsupported, especially those in lower-income brackets or working in industries with less generous policies.

Paid leave policies are instrumental in promoting breastfeeding in the United States and are crucial for infant and maternal health. I was able to take advantage of paid maternity leave with my first baby and soon with my second. We at 1,000 Days support advocacy efforts and continue to push for policy changes at both state and federal levels. As we continue to advocate for comprehensive paid leave policies, we move closer to ensuring every child has the best possible start in life.

The highlight of our year: #March4Nutrition

March is National Nutrition Month! Developed by our friends and colleagues at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, every March we work to amplify the importance of nutrition for families in the first 1,000 days: the time between pregnancy and a baby’s second birthday.

Throughout pregnancy, infancy and beyond, families need good nutrition, breastfeeding support, and nurturing care in order to thrive. Decades of research has shown that nutrition plays a foundational role in a child’s development and her country’s ability to prosper.

We invite you to follow #March4Nutrition on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter all month long and join the conversation. Every week in March, we’ll dive deep into a new theme and explore how nutrition lays the foundation for brighter, healthier futures.

Week 1 March 4-10: Thriving families – What if … families had access to quality nutrition services before, during and after pregnancy?  

Week 2 March 11-17: Women’s nutrition and gender equity – What if … nutrition was seen as a key piece of achieving gender equity?  

Week 3 March 18-24: Nutrition & food (in)security – What if … families had access to safe, affordable and nutritious foods? 

Week 4 March 25-31: What we can do? – What if … our work could support moms, babies, and families in the United States and around the world to access nutritious food?

At 1,000 Days, we believe that every family, everywhere deserves the opportunity to have a healthy 1,000-day window and beyond – and that starts with access to good nutrition.

Join us this month as we #March4Nutrition for moms and babies!

Find the social media toolkit here.

New Research Highlights Critical Need for Strong Policies to Leverage the Value of Breastfeeding

February 9, 2023

Dear Members of the 118th Congress,

As leaders advocating for healthy families and children, 1,000 Days and the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee invite you to join us in creating a landscape of breastfeeding support across the United States.

Breast milk is recognized as the optimal food for babies and plays a critical role in their growth and development.[i] Numerous studies have shown that breastfeeding promotes healthy cognitive and social-emotional development.[ii] It also saves lives by helping to protect babies from infections and conditions such as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).[iii] Breastfeeding even lowers a child’s risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes later in life. In addition, women who breastfed reduce their risk of specific chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and breast and ovarian cancers.[iv]

Unfortunately, the U.S. has many barriers to establishing and maintaining breastfeeding. While four out of five babies born in the United States start out being breastfed, about half are still doing so at six months.[v] This is not due to capacity or wishes of the parent, but rather because environments in the U.S. do not support breastfeeding.

Our country’s policies, systems, and environments must be improved to make breastfeeding a realistic option for all families. New research released this week highlights the critical need for strong policies to fully leverage the value of breastfeeding.

  • Breastfeeding rates can be rapidly improved by scaling up known interventions, policies, and programs in the workplace and health system.
  • Infant formula companies utilize intrusive marketing strategies to families, health care providers, and policy makers to portray these products as solutions to common infant health issues in ways that systematically undermine breastfeeding and prey on parental concerns.
  • Policy changes are needed to address the power imbalances and political and economic structures that influence feeding practices and health outcomes.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the infant formula crisis, it is critical that you and your colleagues in the House and Senate take action to address infant nutrition security, including through support for breastfeeding.

As you know, changing environments and systems requires everyone do their part – parents, policymakers, health facilities, communities, and employers. As a Member of Congress, you have an incredible opportunity to create the policy changes families need. Together, we can build on the momentum from recent advancements like the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act to build a robust infrastructure for infant nutrition security.

Breastfeeding has such a profound impact on population health outcomes that increasing breastfeeding rates and creating lactation-friendly environments have been identified as critical public health priorities in the U.S. as well as across the world. Breastfeeding is included in a variety of national initiatives, including the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, Healthy People 2030, The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding, and more.

It is time to move from reports and vision statements, to taking action on the policy priorities that families deserve. We hope you will take the time to explore the new Lancet series on breastfeeding and join us as we work to build a country where infant nutrition security and breastfeeding is valued, protected, promoted, and supported.

Sincerely,

Amelia Psmythe Seger,
U.S. Breastfeeding Committee		 Blythe Thomas,
1,000 Days

 

About 1,000 Days

An Initiative of FHI Solutions, 1,000 Days is the leading non-profit organization working in the U.S. and around the world to ensure women and children have the healthiest first 1,000 days. Our mission is to make the well-being of women and children in the first 1,000 days a policy and funding priority. We are passionate about turning evidence into action and use our deep understanding of the science and the issues to help shape policies that improve the lives of moms and babies in the U.S. and throughout the world.

About the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee

The mission of the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) is to drive collaborative efforts for policy and practices that create a landscape of breastfeeding support across the United States. USBC functions as a national coalition of 100+ organizational members representing nonprofits, breastfeeding coalitions, federal agencies, and businesses working at national, state/territorial, tribal, local, and community levels to protect, promote, and support human milk feeding. The USBC uses an equity-centered collective impact approach to facilitate multisectoral collaborations.

 

[i] Breastfeeding. World Health Organization. https://apps.who.int/nutrition/topics/exclusive_breastfeeding/en/index.html.  Published Aug. 2018. Accessed February 6, 2023.

[ii] Nutrition in the First 1,000 Days: A Foundation for Brain Development and Learning, 1,000 Days and Think Babies. https://thousanddays.org/wp-content/uploads/1000Days-Nutrition_Brief_Brain-Think_Babies_FINAL.pdf. Accessed February 4, 2023.

[iii] Breastfeeding Benefits Both Baby and Mom. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/features/breastfeeding-benefits/index.html. Published July 27, 2021. Accessed February 6, 2023.

[iv] Making the decision to breastfeed | womenshealth.gov. womenshealth.gov. https://www.womenshealth.gov/breastfeeding/making-decision-breastfeed/#1. Published 2020. Accessed December 20, 2022.

[v] Breastfeeding Report Card, United States 2022. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/data/reportcard.htm. Published August 31, 2022. Accessed February 8, 2023.