This week marks World Breastfeeding Week 2023, with the theme “Let’s make breastfeeding and work work.” This is a global initiative coordinated by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action to promote breastfeeding as the best alternative for exclusively feeding newborn babies up to 6 months, and as a complementary food until at least two years of age.
Undoubtedly, the issue of women’s work is one of the main variables that makes many feel a real obstacle to continuing breastfeeding beyond the period of maternity leave. According to a message from PAHO, women should not have to choose between breastfeeding their children or working. In reality, this is not an individual choice in which women are solely responsible for continuing or not with breastfeeding, or for having to choose between their job or stopping work to continue breastfeeding.
It is a fundamental role of social actors at both macro and micro levels to support breastfeeding for women who choose to do so with their children. At the macrosocial level, what is mainly required is legislation on women’s work that offers basic conditions so that they have not only paid time to continue breastfeeding, but also places and flexibility for returning to work. PAHO points out that at least 18 weeks and preferably 6 months of paid maternity leave should be granted to support breastfeeding. Within Latin America, Mexico is below many countries such as Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Colombia in the number of paid maternity days (84). The creation of more flexible workspaces and conditions is still necessary.
All workers who do not have formal employment must also be considered. Beyond these conditions, continuing breastfeeding and work, beyond paid days, requires the support of an entire ecosystem for this to happen. From support with caregivers to ways in which women can find time to work, it undoubtedly requires environmental support. Beyond these situations, the reflection should also focus on how women choose work as a form of personal fulfillment or as an obligation to support their children. Never does a human being need their mother as much as during the first three years of life, according to specialists in neurological development.
Capitalism undoubtedly forces most actors to meet productivity quotas in order to live, in addition to fulfilling various socially imposed roles. The paradox of choosing between work, breastfeeding, or even motherhood should not be a matter for each woman alone, but also for a system that supports whatever choice women make, based on the well-being of the mother and her children. Ultimately, raising better human beings as a shared responsibility between those who give birth and the system in which we live is the foundation for repairing a social fabric so damaged by placing values in the wrong objects.
— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.
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