Working and Breastfeeding

Resource 1

Points of the resource

1. This toolkit encompasses two legislative issues including Paid Sick Days and Family Leave Insurance to provide help for organizations that aim at establishing a workplace that helps families. Therefore, this resource acknowledges the fact that the modern day family structures as characterized by changing social dynamics, a factor that obligates organizations to develop workplaces that are cognizant of the challenges related to such changes.

2. The resource identifies the dilemma between the desire for workers to keep their jobs and maintain care shown to their families. The low-income workers are the most affected by the lack of paid sick days, a majority of them being women. This resource proposes the adoption of paid sick days campaigns.

3. This resource explains that paid family leaves are among the leading factors that promote family ties. It acknowledges that women are the primary caregivers of their families, but do not have the paid leaves, a factor that increases the financial hardships already presented to the women.

Ways to use this resource as an IBCLC

• As an IBCLC, this resource is significant in exposing the factors that hinder women from undertaking their breastfeeding roles, among them being the professional pressures.
• Similarly, this resource enables an IBCLC to educate the women on the need to revise their employment contracts with regard to the existent legal requirements that obligate companies to consider Paid Sick Days and Family Leave Insurance

Weakness of the resource

This resource fails to address the benefits that organizations gain from adopting policies that envisage Paid Sick Days and Family Leave Insurance, thereby discouraging employers from absorbing the demands of female employees in their workplaces.

Title of Resource: The Cost of Doing Nothing “The Price We All Pay without Paid Leave Policies to Support America’s 21st Century Working Families”

Author or Sponsoring Agency: U.S. Department of Labor

Date: September 4, 2015

Resource 2

Points of the resource

1. The report begins by highlighting the fact that most families lack access to paid leave, stating that a mere 12% of the private sector employees access such privileges. Women form the larger portion of people affected by the care giving burdens, a factor that makes the minimal access to paid leave a perpetuator of economic inequality towards women.

2. The resource highlights that absence of paid leave in workplaces is a recipe for poor health outcomes for children, and weakened links within the family ranks. This affects organizations, and increases the dependence burden, which results into economic stagnation.

3. The resource proposes the access of paid leave, as it minimizes the costs of its inaccessibility to families, workers, businesses and the nation at large.

Ways to use this resource as an IBCLC

• As an IBCLC, the information in this resource is significant in helping all the stakeholders understand the significance of paid leave to the society. Through the costs, it is easier to explain the factors that limit the breastfeeding practices among women.
• Similarly, this resource can be used by an IBCLC to encourage employers to adopt paid leave programs. This would strengthen the family ties and limit the problems that women encounter in their bid to embrace breastfeeding as per the requirements of the International Board of Lactation.

Limitations of the resource

This resource fails to explain the relationship between paid sick leave and the breastfeeding practices among working women. It encompasses a wider spectrum of issues that relate to health, with no specificity on breastfeeding.

Title of Resource: Make Breastfeeding Your Business – An Action Support Kit

Author or Sponsoring Agency: Nova Scotia Breastfeeding

Date: July 2012

Resource 3

Points of the resource

1. The article begins by highlighting the significance of breastfeeding, and the relationship between breastfeeding and employment. The general recommendation is that children have to be breastfed for the first six months.

2. Breastfeeding has several benefits, as explained in the resource. Amidst this, the increased fear of loss of income and non-material maternal allowances has made it difficult for women in occupations to embark on breastfeeding practice. This resource gives tips for organizations to create environments that support breastfeeding not just for the clients but also for the employees.

3. The resource proposes a joint stakeholder approach to ensure that mothers adopt breastfeeding as the most suitable way of limiting the risks associated with lack of breastfeeding.

Ways to use this resource as an IBCLC

• As an IBCLC, this resource is significant in pointing out the social, economic and psychological health impacts that accrue from failures of mothers to breastfeed their children.
• The points brought out in this resource are significant in helping organizations to understand the importance of the environment to the breastfeeding practices adopted by a mother.

Weakness of the report

In as much as this resource gives the steps taken to ensure that workplaces promote breastfeeding, it does not consider the cultural factors that define the diversities of the workplace, hence making it less feasible to use in complex workplaces.

Title of Resource: Supporting Breastfeeding in the Workplace

Author or Sponsoring Agency: Bre Haviland, Kim James, Molly Killman and Karen Trbovich (Association of State Public Health Nutritionists)

Date: March, 2015

Resource 4

Points of the resource

1. This resource begins by defining occupation as a hindrance to breastfeeding by arguing that the breastfeeding rates reduce upon the return of women to their occupations.

2. The authors argue that providing an enabling environment to support breastfeeding in the workplace leads to reduced healthcare costs, minimized employee absenteeism, higher employee retention and increase of organizational loyalty and morale from the organization.

3. This resource exposes the legal stipulations that safeguard the accommodations of women to breastfeed in organizations, among them being giving mothers reasonable breaks to breastfeed and establishing environments that suit milk expression.

Ways to use this resource as an IBCLC

• This resource can be used by an IBCLC to help organizations create environments that do not bar women from breastfeeding their babies, hence citing the need for accommodating the working mothers.
• As an investigator, an IBCLC can use the information in this resource to research and present evidence on the impact of breastfeeding trough a cross section of workforces that have diverse lactation knowledge.

Weakness of the study

This resource has few recommendations on how organizations can create environments that support breastfeeding workers and clients. It should have included a section on the policies that have earlier been used before to ensure that the recommendations stated are attained.

Title of Resource: Business Case for Breastfeeding: Easy Steps to Supporting Breastfeeding Employees

Author or Sponsoring Agency: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

Date: 2008

Resource 5

Points of the resource

1. The resource cites research showing that lactation support programs have advantages on the company, as it helps saving money incurred from healthcare costs as well as minimizing the employee expenses.

2. The resource also gives program options that organizations may exploit in their bid to invest in creating environments that support breastfeeding, among them being the privacy required during milk expression, flexible breaks and work options, education resources and workplace support.

3. The structures of the requisite programs are developed on the select, promote and evaluate format, which enables organizations to determine the best program that suits the characteristics of the workplace.

Ways to use this resource as an IBCLC

• An IBCLC is an educator. Using this resource, an IBCLC can share current evidence based information to provide the anticipatory guidance that empowers mothers and families to overcome the breastfeeding challenges that arise in organizations that do not have provisions for the included programs.
• This report can be used by an IBCLC to advocate for the creation of programs that support breastfeeding, based on the stipulations enshrined in each program.

Weakness of the resource

From the resource, the authors fail to address the financial burden that accrues from the adoption of these programs. For instance, it would be difficult for an organization to provide privacy for ten lactating mothers given that they would require separate rooms, all which call for financial leverage to set up these facilities.

Title of Resource: Breastfeeding State Laws

Author or Sponsoring Agency: National Conference of State Legislatures

Date: 9th February 2015

Resource 6

Points of the resource

1. In the US, 49 states have law that allow women to breastfeed in private or public locations

2. Further, 29 states do not consider breastfeeding as public indecency

3. Only 27 states have laws that regard to breastfeeding in the workplace

4. Five states have implemented campaigns that promote breastfeeding awareness

Ways to use this resource as an IBCLC

• The information in this resource can be used by an IBCLC to oversee the policy development in states that have limited awareness of breastfeeding
• Through the resource, an IBCLC can conduct a study that links organizational success to the implementation of programs that support breastfeeding in the workplace.

Weakness of the resource

This resource is vital in giving an overview of the current state laws, but does not give the limitations that states have towards adoption of the requisite laws to promote breastfeeding in diverse settings.