Breastfeeding benefits mothers as much as babies, but public health messaging often only tells half of the story

• Global and U.S. health authorities agree, however, that human milk provides the optimal nutrition for infants.
• The World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant’s life.
• Human milk can be given to infants directly through breastfeeding or by pumping or expressing human milk into a cup or bottle.
• We are women’s health scholars with combined professional expertise in maternal obstetrics nursing and public health.

Lesser-known benefits of breastfeeding for infants

• Second, the protection from SIDS was the same for infants who were exclusively breastfed compared to infants who may have received formula in addition to any breastfeeding.
• In addition, breastfeeding can significantly protect premature infants – those born before 37 weeks of pregnancy – from developing a condition called necrotizing enterocolitis, an inflammation of the intestines that can be fatal.
• While this condition is rare in full-term infants, it occurs in 5% to 15% of preterm infants.

Benefits for mom, too

• Breastfeeding also provides important benefits for the mother, such as reducing risks of diabetes and breast and ovarian cancers.
• These cancers cannot be treated with hormonal therapy and often grow faster than the more commonly diagnosed hormone receptor-positive breast cancers.
• A 2021 study also found that the longer a woman breastfed, the lower her risk for postpartum depression.

Closing racial gaps

• Despite the benefits of breastfeeding to both infants and mothers, few U.S. families are able to sustain breastfeeding over time.
• Black infant-mother pairs not only have the lowest breastfeeding rates in South Carolina, but they also have the lowest rates nationally, compared to other U.S. racial and ethnic groups.
• Black infants are also more likely to die from SIDS and to be born prematurely.
• The Southeast U.S. is where the widest racial gaps in breastfeeding exist.

Removing barriers to breastfeeding

• Reducing barriers is critical to closing racial and geographic gaps in breastfeeding and allowing U.S. mothers and their infants the opportunity to benefit from the life-saving qualities of human milk.
• Studies show that addressing work-related barriers by making investments in paid family leave, for example, could increase exclusive breastfeeding rates by 15%.
• Workplaces that support breastfeeding breaks and provide safe and clean spaces for expressing and storing human milk are also important in promoting breastfeeding.
• Societal investments in breastfeeding-friendly workplace policies will not only yield cost savings and extend breastfeeding rates, but they will shift the burden of breastfeeding from simply being an individual choice to being a public health priority.

Tisha Felder receives funding from the Patient Centered Research Outcomes Institute (PCORI) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). Joynelle Jackson receives funding from Patient Centered Research Outcomes Institute (PCORI).