Women's Work and Breastfeeding Simultaneously Rise in Ghana

Laurie F Derose

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2007, vol. 55, issue 3, pages 583-612

Abstract: Breastfeeding increased in Ghana during 1988-98 despite women's increased participation in the paid labor force. The modern health care sector seems to have been successfully promoting breastfeeding even over a period when other forces of modernization could have depressed breastfeeding. Full breastfeeding significantly increased in urban areas. Changes in household structure had more complex effects. Over time, fewer new mothers were living with another woman, and this depressed breastfeeding since coresident women support breastfeeding. However, women who worked in the paid labor force and who did not live with other women were particularly likely to bring their child during the workday, and expansion of employment relatively compatible with child rearing partly explains the simultaneous rise in women's work and breastfeeding. Family nucleation nonetheless worked against extended breastfeeding in another way: wives who resided with their husbands became significantly more likely to wean over the course of the decade, perhaps because their husbands have reduced the number of outside partners in the wake of the AIDS epidemic.

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