Working Mothers’ Infant Feeding Experiences During Their Children’s Transition to Child Care: A Qualitative Study

Infant feeding is closely related to children’s life-long health and well-being. It is common for parents to withstand infant feeding challenges and with a plethora of guidelines and advice caregivers can face a great deal of stress. Extra-familial child care and employment circumstances also impact infant feeding, yet little is known about how caregivers experience them. This qualitative study explores working mothers’ infant feeding experiences during their children’s transition to a child care setting. Six mothers with at least one child age 6 to 18 months old in child care participated in semistructured interviews. The themes identified using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis approach were infant feeding burden on mothers, weaning stress, responsive feeding style, seeking professional support, and child care setting partnership. Mothers experienced a significant infant feeding burden due to a gendered division of labor and lack of professional resources and support. The infant feeding burden decreased considerably once children transitioned to child care and some feeding responsibilities were reallocated. Recommendations are discussed for how child care settings can play a more substantial role in supporting families with infant feeding through knowledge translation strategies and modeling. Future research directives assessing how partners can better assist mothers with infant feeding are suggested.