Breastfeeding Appraisal

While the literature about breastfeeding stigmas and hospital and workplace breastfeeding support resources and current breastfeeding legislation largely fails to address breastfeeding disparities across U.S. regions and key sociodemographic determinants of breastfeeding initiation and continuation, these disparities do exist. Figure 1 shows the wide distribution of breastfeeding rates among the fifty states and the District of Columbia. The top five states with the highest breastfeeding initiation rates are Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii, with 94.4%, 92.9%, 92.5%, 90.8%, and 90.6% initiation, respectively. The five worst states are Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama with rates of 52%, 60.9%, 64.6%, 66.9%, …show more content…
Many low-income women cite the necessity of returning to work as their biggest barrier to breastfeeding (Jones et. al, 2015, p. 192). Low-income women tend to have jobs with inflexible hours and limited maternity leave. Additionally, low-income jobs are often not covered under the Family and Medical Leave Act, which stipulates that new mothers can receive twelve weeks of unpaid, job-protected maternity leave (Jones et. al, 2015, 192). This forces low-income mothers to return to work faster, making it more difficult for them to continue breastfeeding, or discouraging them from initiating breastfeeding in the first place. Understanding this trend and looking at the geographical breakdown of breastfeeding initiation rates, a pattern emerges. According to World Atlas data, the top five states with the highest percentage of citizens living under the national poverty line are Louisiana, Mississippi, Arizona, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Kentucky also had the top five lowest breastfeeding initiation rates in the country. Alabama ranks ninth for its percentage of population under the poverty line. Additionally, Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Alabama all have six months exclusive …show more content…
However, they kept hearing that it was better than breastfeeding. Now these communities have adopted the culture of feeding formula. Formula was this golden thing being kept from them because they could not afford it. Now they can, and it is an easy alternative to breastfeeding (L. Shoval, personal communication, April 13, 2018).
Currently, non-Hispanic black women are not meeting any of the Healthy People 2020 breastfeeding objectives due to their rejection of breastfeeding and reliance on formula as means to feed their children (Jones et. al, 2015, p. 189).
According to 2010 Census data, the two states with the largest non-Hispanic black populations are Mississippi with 37.3% and Louisiana with 32.4%. These two states have low breastfeeding initiation and continuation rates. On the contrary, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii all have less than 4.5% non-Hispanic black

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