Advantages of breastfeeding according to Turkish mothers living in Istanbul and Stockholm

Tahire Koctürk

Social Science & Medicine, 1988, vol. 27, issue 4, 405-410

Abstract: As part of a cross-sectional study, carried out among Turkish mother-infant pairs, the mothers of 269 infants living in Istanbul and 30 living in Stockholm were asked about their opinions as to the advantages and/or disadvantages of breastfeeding. The answers were categorized according to the attributes mentioned, quantified and related to the socio-economic status of the area of residence, maternal education, origin, current infant feeding practice and contraceptive method. In Istanbul, 63% of the responses stressed some advantage and 31% some disadvantage of breastfeeding. The contraceptive effect was considered the major advantage and the possibility of milk insufficiency the major disadvantage. In Stockholm, the nutritional value of breastfeeding was considered the most important advantage. No disadvantage was mentioned in Stockholm, despite the fact that breastfeeding durations among the immigrant group was shorter than that of the group in Istanbul. The implications of the responses are analyzed. It is hypothesized that mother-centered advantages, such as the birth-spacing effect of breastfeeding, may be more important motivators for continuing breastfeeding among women living under less-advantaged social conditions, and that, if this is true for some groups of mothers, the infant-centered emphasis in the breastfeeding promotional messages may need modification to include the interests of the mothers, as well.

Keywords: breastfeeding; advantages; contraception; Turkish; immigrants; breastfeeding; promotion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1988
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(88)90276-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:27:y:1988:i:4:p:405-410

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().