Maternal well-being, infant feeding and return to paid work decisions

This project will investigate the conflict between infant feeding and returning to work.

The return to paid work can act as a potential barrier for mothers wishing to continue to breastfeed and vice versa. Breastfeeding has been shown to have a positive long-term impact on child heath, cognitive development, and mothers’ health. Promoting and enabling a mother’s ability to breastfeed, either directly or through expressing milk, is in the interest of employers and wider society.

The decision to return to paid work is motivated by a variety of factors: financial necessity, career concerns or goals, job security, and attitudes to motherhood. Some mothers may feel pressured into returning into work earlier than desired and may reduce or stop breastfeeding earlier than they would otherwise want to; others may make the decision to not return to paid work. Understanding the motivation behind this choice requires consideration of a mothers’ age, education, socio-economic status, and ethnicity. The decision to return to paid work or continue breastfeeding can further inequalities in breastfeeding rates and employment outcomes, leading to differing policy implications by subgroup. This project is the first to explore these obstacles between infant feeding and return to paid work and the impact on maternal wellbeing among different subgroups.

The research will be broken into four distinct stages:

• Stage 1 will use the UK Understanding Society Survey to create a representative picture of how many new mothers breastfeed, return to paid work, and do both.
• Stage 2 will explore societal attitudes to breastfeeding, breastfeeding and paid work, and what the role of employers should be. The project team will fund a British Social Attitude Survey module to gather this data across a variety of subgroups.
• Stage 3 will involve conducting an online survey of mothers who have given birth in the last five years. This will provide data on breastfeeding attitudes, infant feeding preferences, return to paid work motivation, workplace policies, and satisfaction with choices.
• Stage 4 will use quantitative and qualitative analysis (conducting interviews with mothers) to understand mothers’ motivations, decisions, outcomes, and workplace policies. Another survey will also be conducted during this stage with HR/line managers to collect further information on workplace policies and attitudes.

Results will be shared with a variety of stakeholders (parents, infant feeding charities/practitioners, employers, policymakers, and academics) through a variety of outputs. These will be targeted to ensure the project has as big an impact as possible. Social media, workshops, policy briefs and academic articles are key parts of the communication strategy.