First Time Expectant Fathers’ Perspectives on Breastfeeding

The decline in the breastfeeding practices in India, has led to serious implications for infant health [1,2]. National Family Health Survey of India (NFHS 4) report that, only 52.1% of the infants under six months are exclusively breastfed and among them only 42.8% are breastfed on day one [3]. Studies have shown that although moderately high initiation rates of breastfeeding exist in India, the prevalence and duration of exclusive breast feeding is very low, due to various factors that are difficult to address through breastfeeding promotion interventions [4-6]. Several authors [7-9] assert that a focus on modifiable factors such as maternal, paternal and significant others infant feeding attitude may help to increase breastfeeding duration. In cosmopolitan city where women are geographically isolated from their own mothers or other family members, the support of fathers as breastfeeding advocates may be more influential [7-11]. Informal breast feeding support by male partners are repeatedly mentioned in the literature as an important source of support for breastfeeding mothers than formal source by health personnel [10-13]. Women have more contact, access, and interaction with their personal social structures than with healthcare providers, and research indicates that the new mother’s male partner and mother are the two most influential sources of informal social support, but male partners are often excluded from the mother and baby feeding relationship [7,11,13]. Expanding the mother-infant breast feeding initiative to a mother-father-infant feeding initiative recognizes the importance of the male partner in supporting and strengthening breastfeeding efforts and the impact that the informal support structure can have in promoting breastfeeding [10,11,13]. Kristen Mitchell-Box et al. [13] reported that the most significant factor for mothers to initiate bottle-feeding was the mother’s perception of the father’s attitude.