Factors Associated with Exclusive Breast-feeding in Japan: for Activities to Support Child-rearing with Breast-feeding

Abstract

BACKGROUND Benefits of breast-feeding are not only limited to nutrition and sanitation in developing countries but also extend to cost-saving health care and alleviation of anxiety related to childrearing in developed countries. This study aims to elucidate factors associated with exclusive breast-feeding in Japan and use this information to achieve child-rearing support worldwide by promoting breast-feeding. METHODS This cross-sectional study used data from a survey conducted by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of the Japanese government, the First Longitudinal Survey of Babies in 21st Century. All subjects were infants (n = 53,575) born in Japan in 2001 between January 10 and 17 and between July 10 and 17. According to the data, the exclusive breast-feeding rate in Japan during the first 6 months of life was 21.0%. We examined the factors associated with exclusive breast-feeding using univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses. RESULTS Among the factors examined, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for exclusive breast-feeding was low for late childbearing, low birth weight infants, multiple births, smoking parents, living with grandparents, and feeling burdened by childrearing. The adjusted OR was high for factors that included sufficient childcare leave and consultation about childrearing with the spouse, a birth attendant and/or nurse, and a peer in a child-rearing circle. CONCLUSIONS Exclusive breast-feeding is associated not only with medical factors but also with social factors. This study clarifies the necessity of social support to reduce the child rearing burden and a political system to promote paternal participation in childrearing and to improve the childcare leave system.

Inhibitor Factors of Early Initiation of Breastfeeding among Mothers in Rural District Bone, South Sulawesi, Indonesia

“…Study shows no significant relationship between parity to early initial breastfeeding, it's contradictive with the research in Japan (Nakao et al, 2008;Kaneko et al, 2006) that number of children influence breast breastfeeding duration and include the first time baby suckle after delivering. It is supposed as an impact of respondents spreading that almost equal in each observation group, while the way of early initial breastfeeding in this research is temporary (one spot action) which didn't spend days even months like in breastfeeding duration.…”

Development of a Breastfeeding Support Scale for Couples

“…The husband's desire for the wife to breastfeed" , and it leads to the confidence of breastfeeding. Living with a father gathers the rates of breastfeeding (39) were confirmed by this model.…”

Breast-feeding rates and related maternal and infants’ obstetric factors in Japanese twins

“…There also exist case reports [21][22][23][24], including triplets [25,26] and quadruplets [18,27], and detailed descriptions of breast-feeding multiples with relatively small sample sizes [2,15,25,28,29]. Some reports [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] deal with multiples in comparison with singletons or control groups, or treat multiple births as a risk factor.…”