When a woman returns to work after maternity leave, she’s likely to face obstacles to continue breastfeeding. If work is important for her identity, staying away may cause anxiety and she’s less anxious about returning to work. Drake Van Egdom and Matt Piszczek write that since breastfeeding and working both have benefits but doing the two things is difficult, companies should give women autonomy to decide when to return to work.
After having a child, mothers face unique challenges and decisions on how to balance breastfeeding and work. Though breastfeeding is not a requirement for the well-being of babies and mothers, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend that babies are fed breast milk for the first six months. On average, babies need eight feedings each day. For the next six to eighteen months, they can continue breastfeeding and start eating solid foods. Breastfeeding longer has psychological and physical health benefits for mothers and children.
Mothers must decide how long to breastfeed and when to go back to work. Those taking a longer leave also have health improvements, however they may face wage penalties. Given the potential tension between returning to work and continuing breastfeeding, some mothers might stop breastfeeding earlier to avoid problems with work. Many factors may affect this decision.
In our analysis, we use the work-home resources model, which describes how people are motivated to seek out internal and external resources to meet their work and family goals.
Women draw on various resources to support their breastfeeding and return-to-work decisions. These resources can be a house, a marriage, self-discipline and physical and cognitive energy, which all help individuals attain their goals. Critically, resources may come from other sources that the organisational science literature has neglected.
The current study focuses on resources such as time and energy coming from the mother’s own work identity and the father. When a woman derives satisfaction from her work, and it is part of how she sees herself, leaving work aside may cause much anxiety.
We ask two questions. First, do mothers’ identity and the father’s paternal leave decision support the woman’s breastfeeding and return-to-work decisions? Second, what are the psychological mechanisms through which these resources support mothers’ breastfeeding duration and return to work?
We suggest that maternal separation anxiety is key for understanding breastfeeding and return-to-work decisions. This separation anxiety expresses itself through feelings of sadness, guilt or worry about leaving their child. It is an appropriate response in a secure mother-child relationship, but high separation anxiety can pose a barrier to the mother’s return to work.
Women more focused on work may use more resources on work, so they are less anxious about leaving their child sooner. They may have fewer resources focused on their parental role, so they breastfeed for a shorter duration and return to work sooner. Conversely, when fewer of their resources focus on the work role, they may have higher separation anxiety and prioritise staying close to their child. This probably helps them breastfeed longer and take a longer leave. These mothers will use more resources to support their child, whom they couldn’t leave without feeling more anxious. This probably helps them breastfeed longer and take a longer leave.
A father taking a longer parental leave would be more supportive of the mother and show they want to be involved in caring for the family. With the father available as a resource and lower maternal separation anxiety as a result, mothers can use resources for the work role that might have been used at home to manage separation anxiety. With home domain demands sufficiently met, the mother can use these extra resources for work, shortening her leave and breastfeeding length.
A shorter paternal leave means fewer resources for childcare available to the mother, which may make her more anxious about leaving the child. Without the father available as a resource, mothers may experience more separation anxiety. The extra demands draw resources toward the mother role at the expense of the work role, which means a longer maternity leave and breastfeeding duration.
Our findings
In our study, we found that mothers more focused on work did not have more separation anxiety and returned to work sooner, likely focusing more time and energy towards work. The mother’s work identity may decide how she uses resources, but only for work decisions.
Also, the father’s leave is related to the mother’s breastfeeding length and leave in multiple ways. On the one hand, longer fathers’ leaves were directly related to mothers’ breastfeeding longer and taking a longer leave. Couples may make their decisions together, such that mothers and fathers may prioritise taking a longer leave together to spend the time as a family. Fathers’ longer leave also likely contributes time and energy to household tasks that allows the mother to breastfeed longer.
In contrast, a father’s longer leave could also be indirectly related to the opposite: mothers taking a shorter leave. In this case, when fathers took a longer leave, mothers were more comfortable leaving the child at home, which means they were also more comfortable returning to work sooner. However, the direct effect was stronger, so we expect that fathers’ longer leaves will be overall supportive of mothers’ longer leaves. We also note that these are the effects on an average mother, but more research is needed to determine whether certain mothers feel one effect more than the other.
Takeaways
Breastfeeding and working both have benefits but doing the two things is difficult. Countries, companies and families need to support both breastfeeding and mothers’ return to work. We suggest that companies provide parental leave, because otherwise mothers’ leaves are limited to those provided by law. Companies should also let their employees make their return-to-work decisions so that mothers can use resources for the roles that are important to them. The mother’s work identity is important for these outcomes, so companies should avoid stigmatising new mothers in a way that could threaten their work identity. When companies and supervisors make sure that available work-family policies can be used without penalty, they give women more autonomy to decide when to return to work.
Second, our results show that fathers should be encouraged to take a longer paternity leave. We give recommendations for both public policy and company policies. Fathers cannot take leave if it’s not available to them, so we recommend countries provide paternal leave. Research shows the best policy has generous pay, 8-12 months of leave, and gender-equal rights. Companies should also encourage fathers to take a longer leave. To do this, they could train managers and employees on the benefits of using paternal leave and encourage other employees to take a longer leave.
- This blog post is based on I Don’t Want to Leave My Child: How Mothers and Fathers Affect Mother’s Breastfeeding Duration and Leave Length, by Drake Van Egdom, Matthew M. Piszczek, Xueqi Wen, Jing Zhang, Kenneth E. Granillo-Velasquez, and Christiane Spitzmueller, in PsyArXiv Preprints.
- The post represents the views of the author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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