Peaceful Revolution: Let's Offer Real Support to Breastfeeding Employees
As a physician and public health advocate, I am disappointed to see that one of the country's largest formula makers is sponsoring the new Workplace Lactation Toolkit. The toolkit's release in February came on the heels of the federal government's own toolkit, The Business Case for Breastfeeding . Hopefully, the controversy engendered will do more to call attention to the need to support lactating employees.
Supporting breastfeeding employees is a win-win situation for employers and employees. These employees require time and space to express milk during the workday or feed their babies directly. Yet the cost of not supporting them is great: formula feeding moms have 3 times as many one-day absences from work in the first year of life, compared to breastfeeding moms. Aetna found that companies can actually gain a $2.80 return on investment for every dollar spent supporting breastfeeding employees. Supporting lactating employees helps improve employee productivity and decrease employee turnover.
Unlike the toolkit from the federal government, the corporate toolkit is partly sponsored by Abbott (makers of Similac). Because infant formula directly competes with breastfeeding for market share in infant nutrition, any successful breastfeeding program would cut into Abbott's sales and profits. The only way to sell more formula is to sell less breastfeeding. With a formula logo on the bottom of every page of materials, Abbott's motives here are unlikely to be pure.
Previous research on breastfeeding materials from formula companies have shown that they undermine breastfeeding, particularly in first-time mothers, women of color, and those with lower educational levels. CDC data shows that 40% of women do not even meet their own breastfeeding goals, and far more do not meet the medical recommendation to breastfeed exclusively for six months with continued breastfeeding for at least the first 1-2 years of life.
Early cessation of breastfeeding is strongly linked with higher rates of maternal breast cancer, ovarian cancer, type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and heart attacks, as well as a host of acute and chronic diseases in children.
Not surprisingly, the toolkit is mediocre at best, and points users to the Abbott website for tips on breastfeeding, where formula is heavily marketed. The toolkit's sponsors erroneously claim that it has a unique focus on low-paid hourly workers. In fact, the reading level of the employee materials is far too high to be effective, breastfeeding is made to appear difficult, and the graphic layout makes it hard for employees to read. Its list of resources neglects any mention of the government's Business Case for Breastfeeding, a very telling omission. The corporate toolkit seems to be more of a way for companies to burnish their image, rather than make real change for lactating employees.
It appears that Abbott's partners, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the publisher of Working Mother magazine, fail to understand the inherent conflict of interest and how their product may potentially undermine the health of women and children. If so, these companies wouldn't be the first to miss the connection. Hospitals and doctors' offices are quick to give nursing mothers free marketing "gifts" from formula companies, like diaper bags at hospital discharge. Many of these folks may have good intentions, but simply don't realize that they are not actually acting in their patients' best interest, and are not practicing evidence-based medicine. Recent CDC research shows that 70% of US hospitals continue to market infant formula to new mothers.
An organization called Ban the Bags is trying to change all that, and the numbers of hospitals who have eliminated the commercial discharge bags is growing. As a result, the formula companies have come up with new tricks, and it appears that this Workplace Toolkit might be one of them.
To truly support the health of women and children and help their own bottom lines, companies should be supporting breastfeeding employees using the Business Case for Breastfeeding, not poorly-designed material from a formula company.
A Peaceful Revolution is a blog about innovative ideas to strengthen America's families through public policies, business practices, and cultural change. Done in collaboration with MomsRising.org, read a new post here each week.
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I don't really know what you are getting at, are you suggesting women taking their babies to work with them? Now don't get me wrong, when I am on a plane and I see a baby I breathe a sigh of relief when the mother whips her boob out for it, knowing I am in for a peaceful flight.
I love parents who take care of their kids but I don't want kids in my workplace. First it will be cute newborns, then the screamers, then the toddlers, you let some in under certain circumstances today and tomorrow the office will be turned into a creche. I have enough problems to be dealing with at work than to be tripping over other peoples kids.
I think it would really have to depend on the actual environment in your particlular office and how crowded and busy it is. If it is real crowded and busy, it wouldn't be a good place for a baby to be, but if it was just a normal pretty mellow pace (like a lot of workplaces where people have time to comment on message boards) there shouldn't be any good reason not to except for uptight idiots who can't be bothered by accomodating other peoples needs.
those of us who don't have children (and don't smoke) end up covering for those that do in so many ways.
now, i was a working mom, single for a time, and worked very hard NOT to take advantage of my co-workers. but nowadays every "special" case means more work for me.
make a choice for YOURSELF, and then think about how it affects your co-workers, too.
the world DOES NOT revolve around you and your get.
Actually, in physics, chemistry, engineering, high technology and mathematics -- I've never actually seen a woman with a secure enough job to have a child and not lose their job over it, regardless of how many years of actual experience, seniority or level of education (usually PhD or Habilitation), FMLA be damned. In software engineering, it's even worse: I've never seen another woman actually doing development in the same outfit.
The reason this is relevant is to keep in mind the level of outright misogyny you're dealing with. We've learned to not ask for too much. Just staying employed is hard enough, without asking for wildly unrealistic benefits like being allowed to have children, much less breast-feed them.
Great article--- However this is what appeared at the bottom:
Baby Formula
For your baby's feeding issues try our specialty formulas. Free sample
www.enfamil.ca
And then this appeared as I made my response:
New From Good Start
The First And Only Formula With Natural Cultures. Learn More.
www.Nestle-Baby.ca
Honestly I think if you have a child young enough to be breastfeeding, you shouldn't be at work. Your child needs you. There's really something to be said for bonding during those first two years, for brain development. Maybe we shouldn't "have it all" when it comes at the deep expense of those children we choose to bring into the world.
I can't even begin to point out all the things wrong with this comment so I'll just leave it at this. Thank you for presenting us with your outdated opinion and I sincerely hope you realize that reality just doesn't make your world possible for the vast majority of mothers in this country. Perhaps you could lend your support to those out there lobbying for an expansion of maternal leave policies at the federal level.
That's right. If all men with children young enough to breastfeed just quit their lousy jobs anyway, they would have time to shuttle junior to and from the mother's workplace for feeding, and have time to clean the house besides!
I totally agree. I'm entirely selfish for wanting to have it all, like food on the table and a roof over my babies' heads.
Listen, if you're willing to subsidize the pittance my school teacher husband makes so that I can stay home with my two breastfed babies, I will totally cash your check. Let me know.
The sad fact is though, that like it or not most women today have to work to support their families and usually are expected to. It is no longer a choice. I do not feel this makes me more liberated do you?
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