Children’s Contact with Incarcerated Parents

Intention and Initiation of Breastfeeding Among Women Who Are Incarcerated

“…Interviews with the incarcerated women showed that some women did not want to breastfeed their newborns given their impending separation. For women who do initiate breastfeeding, geographic distance, transportation, and lack of support from the infants' caregivers create significant barriers to visiting, especially with the frequency needed to maintain milk supply (Poehlmann, Dallaire, Loper, & Shear, 2010;Shlafer, Loper, & Schillmoeller, 2015). Furthermore, most prisons maintain rules against physical contact and exposure that effectively prohibit breastfeeding during visits.…”