Introduction
There have been numerous studies that have been conducted into the relationship between the weight of a woman and the quantity of breastmilk produced. Evidence has shown that there is a huge variation in the quantity of breastmilk that is produced on the basis of the size of the woman. This is because the body of a woman has a relationship to the composition of breastmilk and the rate of production that comes with the components of milk secreted by the glands. This is often marked by the fact that there is a negative relationship between the size of a woman and the quantity of breastmilk produced.
The weight of a nursing mother is generally viewed as an indicator of breastfeeding practices. This is because the quantity of milk produced plays a role in determining whether a woman will end breastfeeding earlier or not. This therefore gives indicators for the provision of the appropriate level of mass education to nursing mothers.
Research Questions
This literature review will seek to cover the following pointers that will help to answer the fundamental research questions including:
Pre-pregnancy weight of mothers in Irish maternity hospitals are predictors of breastfeeding practices after discharge;
Whether weight after discharge influence the breastfeeding practices of nursing mothers in Ireland or not.
Does obesity reduce the ability of mothers to breastfeed in Ireland so they tend to end breastfeeding earlier than non-obese mothers?
Baby Feeding Practices in Ireland
Ireland is generally viewed as a country which is highly conservative and there is a general trend towards gender-based practices where the woman is a homemaker and the man is a breadwinner. The country has a long history of Catholicism which requires people to be protective of their bodies and shy of showing off their bodies in public. The result is that most women prefer to breastfeed in the privacy of their homes rather than outside where they could be seen doing so in public domain.
However, with the rise of women working outside the home, there has been a general trend towards breastfeeding openly and this has created an array of mixed attitudes towards the conduct of breastfeeding. Studies show that this has a direct effect on reducing the number of Irish women who provide breastfeeding to their children. This is because most women prefer to use other methods of feeding. This is because the culture intervenes and plays a major role in getting them to seek to avoid breastfeeding.
This is because as more women continue to work outside their home, they will have to spend time with their babies in public areas. This causes them to prefer various forms of feeding their children. Evidence shows that there are only 49.5% native Irish women who breastfeed in the Republic of Ireland this is opposed to 88.1% of non-Irish women in Ireland who breastfeed. This shows that native women in Ireland are more likely to opt for various forms of breastfeeding for their children under 1 year.
Other researchers postulate that most foreign women in Ireland are housewives and they work inside the home without any contact to the outside world. This is opposed to Irish women who are now increasingly working outside the home .
Aside the work habits, modern trends also dictate that Irish women have weight problems. This is due to the changes in the conditions in the world and the fact that there is a lot of feeding problems and challenges that lead to obesity. Estimates indicate that as many as 85% of Irish women have weight problems. This confirms the fact that the inverse relationship between weight and breastfeeding competencies affect the way and manner in which women feed their children in Ireland.
Trends in Breast Feeding Frequency
Empirical evidence of the mid-1980s when women started to work in regular jobs and equality was instituted deeply in Ireland, the levels of breast feeding mothers reduced. This was due to a high level of focus on the workplace environment with little or now focus on the home and on nursing. This is shown in the table below which indicates the percentage of women who breastfed after they were discharged from hospitals according to the Irish Department of Health’s statistics from 1985 to 1991.
The table above shows that the number of women breastfeeding continued to decline significantly throughout the mid-1980s. This is in proportion to the number of women who were taking conventional places reserved for men in the workplace. And it indicates that women were more inclined to pursue a system of bottle-feeding and other means of feeding their babies when they had places in the standard workplace.
McSweeney & Kevany showed that breast-feeders are often people who give birth later in life than those who bottle-feed. This shows that bottle-feeders are younger mothers and they might need to work harder and do more in order to achieve more resources. This is also confirmed by the fact that breast-feeders are likely to be from higher socio-economic groups in Ireland. This is complemented by the fact that breast-feeders have higher levels of education. This shows that bottle-feeding correlates with the fact that women are likely to have a strong desire to bridge financial gaps and deal with major challenges that are financial and economic in outlook. Thus, bottle feeding is viewed as a process through which women are able to work harder and find ways of getting their children to survive whilst they make a living.
Newer results showed that more women were likely to breastfeed into the late 1990s and the 2000s. This is shown in Table 2 below:
In this research, it was identified that more and more women in Ireland were utilising breastfeeding as a means of feeding their children. This seem to show two main patterns – first of all, more women were in the workforce so they could assert themselves and demand to be respected as they breastfed. This is in contrast with the reason given by Inglis which suggests that women were prevented from exposing parts of their bodies as part of the Catholic tradition of Ireland.
The increases in the number of women breastfeeding in Ireland could also be attributed to the public education campaign of the Irish government and public organisations meant to promote the benefits of breastfeeding. This is discussed below in the next section of the literature review.
Background of National Policy in Relation to Breastfeeding Practices
Nations have various policies and plans meant to promote breastfeeding. This is because numerous scientific studies show that breastfeeding is the way forward. This indicates that most governments have to make contributions and find ways of enhancing and promoting breastfeeding within their national boundaries.
Research shows that there have been numerous programmes that have been instituted to promote breastfeeding in Ireland. In 2008, a research showed that out of 561 pregnant women attending hospital in Dublin, as many as 47% of Irish-national women had breastfeed their children from birth to their antenatal days. These were women who had not given anything to their children but breastmilk. This shows a high level and a high standard of providing breastfeeding amongst Irish women.
There are many policies and pointers that could be brought up and utilised to promote and increase breastfeeding in Ireland. These programmes are not always local and restricted to the Irish government. As a matter of fact, the World Health Organisation and UNICEF sought to increase breastfeeding of infants from birth to age two and beyond through the programme named the Global Strategy of Infant and Young Child Feeding. This was to create guidelines and blueprints for nations to adapt into their own national health policies because the World Health Organisation had done a lot of research into the benefits of breastfeeding. And as such, there was the need to transpose these findings onto nations and ensure that all people could get their own way of promoting and enhancing breastfeeding and promoting the best systems and processes of achieving high levels of breastfeeding numbers.
Ireland’s strategy was known as the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative which was meant to promote breastfeeding in each hospital by getting doctors to promote and enhance breastfeeding to individual mothers. This strategy sought to yield results and since it was instituted in 2006, Ireland’s level of breastfeeding increased significantly and there were as many as 55% of mothers who signed up to the programme and did their best to promote and enhance breastfeeding.
There is however evidence that other countries did more and achieved higher levels of breastfeeding. This is because there were certain initiatives that worked hand-in-hand with the interest of promoting such programmes. This led to higher levels of responses in other nations and caused Ireland to remain in low levels of breastfeeding standards.
Comparison of Breastfeeding Practices in Ireland and the Rest of Europe
Despite the many campaigns to promote and enhance breastfeeding in Ireland, the country has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe. With a figure of 55% of mothers initiating breastfeeding in Ireland, the country ranks behind UK with 76%, Norway with 99%.
Some authors have argued that Ireland has no culture of breastfeeding because of some complications in the culture and traditions. Some writers have gone as far as saying that women in Ireland have dysfunctional breasts because they are not utilising their breast in breastfeeding.
Another thing that casts doubts on the hypotheses relating to women is that Irish women are not so over-represented in the workplace as other countries in Europe. Table 3 below shows the representation and participation of women in the Irish workforce in relation to other countries in Europe.
The table above shows that less than 20% of Irish women are participating actively in the labour force of Ireland. This is far below that of other Western European countries – France, Germany and the UK. In spite of this, all these European countries have more women who are breastfeeding. This means that Irish women might have other reasons for using bottle-feeding in place of breastfeeding.
These findings also suggest that the existing policy initiatives in Ireland have failed to increase breastfeeding. However, these initiatives seem to be changing things gradually rather than in an immediate and revolutionary approach. This shows that there are many obstacles and issues that are standing in the way of trying to change and modify the system in order to promote and enhance the best systems and processes.
Ethnic and Physical Features of Breast Feeding Practices in Ireland
Evidence is apparent and shows that women are less likely to initiate breast-feeding if they gain too much weigh. The normal BMI is always recommended for women before they become pregnant as this helps to promote the production of breastmilk and body juices. This is because the body is better and more productive in terms of creating breastmilk if there is a lower and a medium body mass index. This is often attributed to gestational issue that come with weight gain and other independently associated issues that come with obesity.
Obesity also leads to gestational issues and the ability to provide milk over a sustained period of time. Also, it is identified that the process and the procedure of giving breastmilk ends earlier than normal women. This indicates the presentation of major processes that leads to the inability of women to continue to give their children breastmilk. This is because women are unable to provide breastmilk when they get to a certain level in their milk production and this means they are not able to provide breastmilk to their babies at a certain stage.
On the other hand, evidence also show that women who come from ethnic backgrounds that promote breastfeeding promote breastfeeding in Ireland. This is because they are encouraged by their culture to provide breastmilk to their babies as opposed to those who are from countries where women are discouraged to have breast milk . This indicates that breastfeeding has some cultural elements that are often overlooked by Irish women which contributes to lower levels of breastfeeding.
There are socio-economic circumstances in Ireland like the fact that there are a lot of artificial milks that play the same role as breastmilk. This is because as the economic conditions in Ireland increased and was enhanced, and provides the same qualities and features similar to that of the natural substance. This makes Ireland a place where women will prefer to purchase something that is natural and potentially more nutritious and without deficiencies that some women might have. It is apparent that the lack of positive role models and the lack of commitment and promotion of breastfeeding by the medical authorities in Ireland is contributing to a culture whereby women are not likely to promote and achieve high levels of breastfeeding in communities.
Aside the promotion element, the final decision to either breastfeed or not rests solely on the individual woman and it is a choice that every woman has to make in her life. This means that when a woman does not feel that she has to breastfeed, no level of pressure or stress can force her to do so and this is against her human rights. Thus, there is a general process whereby women gradually build an attitude where breastfeeding is secondary to the choice of a woman and her right to have the child in the first place.
Also, there is a generally negative attitude towards breastfeeding in public and doing so in the presence of other people – particularly men . This is because the Irish Catholic culture has created a preference for a desire to cover one’s nakedness and prevent the exposure of women in public. Aside the female sentiment of being viewed by others, many Irish males view the idea of sitting next to a woman who is breastfeeding as a negative thing.
Conclusion
This literature review has critically examined the concept of breastfeeding and how it is perceived by women in Ireland in particular. It reviews why women are less interested in breastfeeding in Ireland. The findings show that women are less likely to breastfeed because of the traditions and attitudes of the rather conservative Catholic country. This got worsened by the fact that women in Ireland got engaged in the workforce in the past three decades and due to that, they found it increasingly difficult to breastfeed. Evidence shows that financial pressure got women to quit breastfeeding altogether. This led to major problems for a large majority of women. However, evidence also suggests that women in other European countries have high levels of breastfeeding. With some having as high as 99% of their women breastfeeding in the first six months. This shows that the perceptions and attitudes of Irish women play a greater role in deciding whether to breastfeed or not. The implication is that women have to be trained and encouraged to breastfeed. International programmes in Ireland have slightly increased women’s breastfeeding preferences. However, this is not good enough because there are many women who still do not breastfeed. This is often attributed to various genetic conditions including the trend towards obesity which limits women’s abilities to produce milk and lactate. There is also the problem of the appearance of milk substitutes that can be purchased from shops. This causes women to prefer to purchase milks and administer to their children through bottles as opposed to through breastmilk.
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