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Breast-feeding good for baby, business
BIRMINGHAM, ALA. -- Most employers know the routine when it comes to employees with new babies. There are the sleepless nights, the countless sick days as the infant catches every bug, and even the fear a newly returned mom might quit altogether.
A new nationwide program is trying to convince employers that there's an easy way to reduce sick time, health care charges and other costs associated with having parents as employees: encourage breast-feeding.
Called "The Business Case for Breast-feeding," it argues that workplaces that invest in lactation support will have employees with healthier children -- and who are more productive.
Ten locations around the country were chosen to test the project from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In Birmingham, Ala., the program kicked off in August with a workshop to train 35 people to persuade businesses to provide lactation support, most often in the form of a room to pump milk and the time to do so.
"It's not just the right thing to do. It's good for business," said Sylvia Edwards, a lactation consultant at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who participated in the program and has helped UAB set up its own lactation center for employees.
Alabama was selected for the program in part because it's in the bottom three states in the country when it comes to breast-feeding initiation rates. Advocates hope that encouraging workplaces will help raise those rates overall, with an ultimate goal of having 75 percent of mothers breast-feeding, up from the current rate of about 50 percent.
Studies show that women who work full time breast-feed less often and for shorter periods than those who don't. According to a report by the Sloan Work and Family Research Network at Boston College, 45 percent of women working when their babies were 4 months old breast-fed, compared with 65 percent of women not working with a 4-month-old. At six months, the number for nonworking mothers had dropped to 35 percent and for working mothers to 25 percent....
