The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) for whom I act as Research Task Force Coordinator (and have previously worked with in other ways, including being elected as international representative on its steering committee), asked me to write a draft for their Action Folder for World Breastfeeding Week 1998 on this theme. Several others participated in fixing up the text, particularly Naomi Baumslag. WABA’s experts turned it into a pleasure for the eye and brain that you will find on their site if you click here.

 

This is translated from a paper I did for the first WABA Global Forum in 1996 (writen and presented together with UNICEF and IBFAN) by CEFEMINA of Costa Rica.

Click here to open a scanned copy in pdf format.

This is a brief contribution to WABA’s Breastfeeding, Women and Work, Human Rights & Creative Solutions publication.

Click here to open the scanned pdf file.

In 1998, WABA held a meeting in the Philippines on Breastfeeding, women and work: Human rights and creative solutions, at which I made a presentation on this theme, and a short presentation was included in the proceedings.

Click here to download the file in pdf format.

This presentation will combine a review of what has been found in a literature about the role of fathers in breastfeeding with ponderings and ideas based on the author’s own experiences both as a father and as a trained father-group leader in Sweden on involving fathers more in infant feeding.

Even in cultures where most fathers have little interest in or knowledge about breastfeeding, they and their mothers may often have a great deal of power over how mothers feed their babies (1).

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This is a French translation of a talk I gave at a WABA meeting in the Philippines entitled “Increasing the father’s involement in child care”.

Click here to open the pdf file.

Image: A young school girl breastfeeding in Lesotho. [Sign of a breastfeeding culture: on the back side of this tourist post card, it says, "Mosotho woman weaving a basket".

Click here to open a scanned pdf file of this paper.

This paper was presented at the WABA International Workshop Breastfeeding Women and Work: from Human Rights to Creative Solutions in Quezon City, the Philippines on June 1, 1998.

This paper is modified from one presented at the WABA International Workshop Breastfeeding Women and Work: from Human Rights to Creative Solutions in Quezon City, the Philippines on June 1, 1998.

Unfortunately, infant care is almost exclusively a woman’s realm in virtually every culture, no doubt due in part to the fact that only women can breast feed. Yet the father has important roles to play both in sharing child care responsibilities and in providing crucial support to the vulnerable mother-child dyad in the early weeks and months of life.

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Este breve artículo combinará la revisión de lo que ha sido encontrado en la literatura del tema, acerca del rol de los padres en el Amamantamiento, con reflexiones e ideas basadas en la experiencia personal del autor, tanto como padre como también como Líder / padre capacitado, de un grupo de Suiza, con el objeto de lograr mayor participación de los padres en la alimentación del infante.

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Image: batik by  Chuah Thean Teng, Malaysia

Nosotros los seres humanos creamos la civilización para permitirnos ganar una vida tan buena como sea posible y para elevar el nivel de nuestras familias en forma óptima. Pero ahora parece que estamos encabezando cada vez más un mundo donde el propósito final es dejado de lado y el bienestar material, particularmente para las compañías globales, toma prioridad. ¿A qué se debe esto? Tal vez tengamos que admitir que esto es porque hemos permitido que sea de esta manera. No hemos utilizado nuestro poder de votación y otros medios democráticos para alcanzar el desarrollo balanceado. Pero no tiene que suceder de esta manera. Enfrentados con los enormes desafíos, nosotros también tenemos la tendencia a llegar a estar pacíficos.

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