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The influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant’s life has enormous potential to reduce mortality and morbidity. The older generation, particularly the infant’s grandmothers, play a central role in various aspects of pregnancy and child rearing decision-making within the fa...

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Autores principales: Negin, Joel, Coffman, Jenna, Vizintin, Pavle, Raynes-Greenow, Camille
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4847220/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27121708
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-016-0880-5
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author Negin, Joel
Coffman, Jenna
Vizintin, Pavle
Raynes-Greenow, Camille
author_facet Negin, Joel
Coffman, Jenna
Vizintin, Pavle
Raynes-Greenow, Camille
author_sort Negin, Joel
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant’s life has enormous potential to reduce mortality and morbidity. The older generation, particularly the infant’s grandmothers, play a central role in various aspects of pregnancy and child rearing decision-making within the family unit. This is particularly true in low- and middle-income countries where older women are seen as owners of traditional knowledge. Despite this, most health programs target the individual person most directly involved in the target behaviour – usually new mothers – without a commensurate understanding of who else influences those decisions. In this systematic review we aim to quantify the impact of the grandmother on influencing a mother’s breastfeeding practices. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review using Web of Science, Scopus, and Medline databases using search terms for grandmother and breastfeeding. Eligible studies reported on the duration of exclusive breastfeeding and included estimates of effect of a grandmother’s influence including whether or not the grandmother lived with the infant’s family, the grandmother’s education, and the grandmother’s attitudes towards and prior experience with breastfeeding. RESULTS: We identified 568 articles and, after review, 13 articles were assessed as meeting the selection criteria. They were conducted in both developed and developing countries and included cross-sectional surveys, prospective cohort studies and one randomised controlled trial. Eight studies examined the effects of attitudes or experiences of older generations with respect to breastfeeding and five of the eight found a significant positive impact on breastfeeding when grandmothers of the infants had had their own breastfeeding experience or were positively inclined towards breastfeeding, resulting in effects of between 1.6 to 12.4 times more likely to exclusively breastfeed or refrain from introducing solid foods. A Chinese study however found that highly educated grandmothers were associated with decreased exclusive breastfeeding. The majority of the studies were assessed to be of weak or moderate quality. CONCLUSIONS: This review found evidence that demonstrates that grandmothers have the capacity to influence exclusive breastfeeding. Programs that seek to influence exclusive breastfeeding should include grandmothers in their interventions to achieve maximum impact.
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spelling pubmed-48472202016-04-28 The influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review Negin, Joel Coffman, Jenna Vizintin, Pavle Raynes-Greenow, Camille BMC Pregnancy Childbirth Research Article BACKGROUND: Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant’s life has enormous potential to reduce mortality and morbidity. The older generation, particularly the infant’s grandmothers, play a central role in various aspects of pregnancy and child rearing decision-making within the family unit. This is particularly true in low- and middle-income countries where older women are seen as owners of traditional knowledge. Despite this, most health programs target the individual person most directly involved in the target behaviour – usually new mothers – without a commensurate understanding of who else influences those decisions. In this systematic review we aim to quantify the impact of the grandmother on influencing a mother’s breastfeeding practices. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review using Web of Science, Scopus, and Medline databases using search terms for grandmother and breastfeeding. Eligible studies reported on the duration of exclusive breastfeeding and included estimates of effect of a grandmother’s influence including whether or not the grandmother lived with the infant’s family, the grandmother’s education, and the grandmother’s attitudes towards and prior experience with breastfeeding. RESULTS: We identified 568 articles and, after review, 13 articles were assessed as meeting the selection criteria. They were conducted in both developed and developing countries and included cross-sectional surveys, prospective cohort studies and one randomised controlled trial. Eight studies examined the effects of attitudes or experiences of older generations with respect to breastfeeding and five of the eight found a significant positive impact on breastfeeding when grandmothers of the infants had had their own breastfeeding experience or were positively inclined towards breastfeeding, resulting in effects of between 1.6 to 12.4 times more likely to exclusively breastfeed or refrain from introducing solid foods. A Chinese study however found that highly educated grandmothers were associated with decreased exclusive breastfeeding. The majority of the studies were assessed to be of weak or moderate quality. CONCLUSIONS: This review found evidence that demonstrates that grandmothers have the capacity to influence exclusive breastfeeding. Programs that seek to influence exclusive breastfeeding should include grandmothers in their interventions to achieve maximum impact. BioMed Central 2016-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC4847220/ /pubmed/27121708 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-016-0880-5 Text en © Negin et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Negin, Joel
Coffman, Jenna
Vizintin, Pavle
Raynes-Greenow, Camille
The influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review
title The influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review
title_full The influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review
title_fullStr The influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review
title_full_unstemmed The influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review
title_short The influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review
title_sort influence of grandmothers on breastfeeding rates: a systematic review
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4847220/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27121708
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-016-0880-5
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