Dear Colleagues,
WABA's Women & Work Task Force focuses on childcare as well as on the
workplace. We are very interested in the role of the childcare world (often
abbreviated to "ECCE" for "Early Childhood Care and Education" or "ECEC" for
"Early Childhood Education and Care"). Clearly, the ECCE setting can do a
lot to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding.or it can have just the
opposite effect!
From what I have learned recently, many or most countries have set national
standards for childcare. I found a fascinating overview of ECCE in Europe
and North America at http://www.childpolicy.org/kamerman.pdf. There I
learned that historically in the Western world, the impetus to set up ECCE
institutions has comes from two roots: #1 to provide early childhood
education and services for the benefit of all children, or #2 to provide
services to the children who were poor and disadvantaged because their
mothers had to be in the workforce. Now that so many mothers of young
children are in the workforce, it's not just the children of the poor who
need care, and I'll bet that the emphasis is moving more toward #1.
Otherwise the middle class would have to admit that the children of employed
mothers might possibly be "disadvantaged". and that is a very unpopular
stance to take.
If a nation sees it has a responsibility to provide universal care and
education for its children, even young children, then an interesting
question is to define the age at which the responsibility for care and
education switches from being the parents' to being the State's. If the
State truly takes responsibility for all of its young citizens, then you can
see how maternity/parental leave from work makes sense.it is the state's way
of making sure babies can get maternal/parental care when they are too young
for group care.
So now it's becoming clear to me why this is such a tough issue in the USA,
where the State does NOT think it's responsible for young children, and
parents are left to sink or swim on their own except for a few programs that
stigmatize poor mothers, especially single mothers.
But I digress.
WABA has an opportunity to advise a group that is working on national
childcare standards in an Asian country. I'd love to know if any of you has
already done this! So the reason I'm writing Lactnet is to ask you, my
friends, what you know about how the national standards for childcare in
your countries treat breastfeeding. (To include US people, I guess I'll ask
about state-level childcare standards as well.) I would love to hear whether
and how breastfeeding is included in the childcare standards. Has anyone
here been invited to help write or revise standards, to ensure that
breastfeeding gets the treatment it deserves?
As you know, the Global Strategy mentions childcare as an area with roles
and responsibilities in breastfeeding. See paragraphs 28, 41, 43, and
especially 46:
'Child-care facilities, which permit working mothers to care for their
infants and young children, should support and facilitate continued
breastfeeding and breast-milk feeding.'
Please send me your comments privately as well as to the list. My Lactnet
mailbox is stuffed and likely to remain so until after the ILCA Conference.
[log in to unmask]
Love from Chris
Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
LLL Leader Reserve
working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA)
Co-coordinator, Women & Work Task Force, WABA
***********************************************
To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
