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.

Come coinvolgere di più il papà nel prendersi cura dei figli? (1º giugno 1998)

Questo articolo è modificato da uno presentato al Workshop Internazionale di WABA Allattamento, Donne e Lavoro: dai Diritti Umani a Soluzioni a Quezon City, Filippine, 1º giugno 1998.

Translation by Francesca Felici

Sfortunatamente occuparsi dei neonati è quasi esclusivamente una prerogativa della donna praticamente in tutte le culture, senza dubbio almeno in parte perchè solo le donne possono allattare. Tuttavia, il padre svolge un ruolo importante sia nel dividere le responsabilità del badare al bambino, sia offrendo un sostegno cruciale alla vulnerabile diade madre-figlio nelle prime settimane e mesi di vita.

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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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