As well as chapters on such things as: combining routines and feeding on demand, gentle parenting even when it is giving you the shits, managing the needs of a sleep - hating baby, etc., Nagle talks a lot about the
problems she
perceives with our current cultural and social
attitudes towards breastfeeding and sleep.
Some barriers include the negative
attitudes of women and their partners and family members, as well as health care professionals, toward breastfeeding, whereas the main reasons that women do not start or give up breastfeeding are reported to be poor family and social support,
perceived milk insufficiency, breast
problems, maternal or infant illness, and return to outside employment.2 Several strategies have been used to promote breastfeeding, such as setting standards for maternity services3, 4 (eg, the joint World Health Organization — United Nations Children's Fund [WHO - UNICEF] Baby Friendly Initiative), public education through media campaigns, and health professionals and peer - led initiatives to support individual mothers.5 — 9 Support from the infant's father through active participation in the breastfeeding decision, together with a positive
attitude and knowledge about the benefits of breastfeeding, has been shown to have a strong influence on the initiation and duration of breastfeeding in observational studies, 2,10 but scientific evidence is not available as to whether training fathers to manage the most common lactation difficulties can enhance breastfeeding rates.
These
perceived barriers include the difficulty and embarrassment of breastfeeding in public, the
problem of maintaining personal identity whilst breastfeeding and general
attitudes towards breastfeeding and women's bodies in wider society — as well as those held by mothers, fathers and families.