Breathe
By Dámaris Sosa
World Breastfeeding Week 2024 reminds us of the importance of continuing to promote and encourage breastfeeding so that both mothers who so desire and their babies can exercise their right to breastfeed and be fed in all situations.
This year, the theme of the Week is very powerful: Closing the Gap: Supporting Breastfeeding in All Situations. Why do I think it is powerful? Because breastfeeding should be a natural and, perhaps, the most important activity of parenting, and it should be able to happen in any space or situation. However, a myriad of everyday family, social and work-related barriers continue to affect exclusive breastfeeding.
In Mexico, still 7 out of 10 babies under 6 months do not receive breast milk as their only food, as recommended by the World Health Organization (ENSANUT Continua 2021-2022). This means that 70% of children under 6 months in Mexico are missing out on the opportunity to exclusively drink the best food they can receive for their age: breast milk.
What does it mean to close a breastfeeding gap? It means lowering the barriers that hinder mothers from having all the information, support and resources to successfully feed their own milk to their babies. This would ensure that all women who want to can breastfeed regardless of their economic situation or their personal and work circumstances.
How? For example, with public policies that support and protect the right to breastfeed, such as maternity leave and paid time off for expressing milk at work; with actions to raise awareness among work colleagues, family members and people in the women's close environment to reduce the stigma of breastfeeding in public; with counseling on breastfeeding and adequate transition to complementary feeding; with health professionals who can provide respectful support for breastfeeding support; or with the creation of support spaces in the community network for breastfeeding; with breastfeeding counseling and adequate transition to complementary feeding; with health professionals who can provide respectful support for breastfeeding support, or with the creation of support spaces in the community network in which women work.
While we know what it takes to close breastfeeding gaps, making them a reality can take many years. For example, after years of insistence before the International Olympic Committee's Athletes' Commission, for the first time an Olympic Village, Paris 2024, has a childcare center that is open daily from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm so that Olympic athletes can enjoy time to unwind and play, supporting the parental care of their babies.
This achievement, spearheaded by Allyson Felix (American athlete and activist), also includes other support to facilitate care, such as breastfeeding athletes having special passes for their babies to enter the Olympic village, having the closest rooms to the village and having lactation rooms to breastfeed or express milk comfortably and without worries. Do you want to know how the athletes' experience has been? Keesja Gofers (water polo player, Australia) has shared it on social media.
Another example of public policies that protect the right to breastfeeding, which may take time to materialize and at the same time is essential to reduce breastfeeding gaps, is the extension of paid maternity leave from 12 to 24 weeks, as part of a comprehensive vision of care and an agenda of legislative reforms to increase parental leave.
Since 1917, the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States included a four-week maternity leave. Years later (1960 and 1974), reforms were made that are still in force today: 12 weeks paid maternity leave.
In the LXV Legislature, six initiatives have been presented to extend the duration of maternity leave. Five of these were presented in the Chamber of Deputies and one in the Senate of the Republic. Four of the six initiatives have pending status in the Commissions of the Chamber of origin: Congresswoman Margarita Zavala and the parliamentary group of the National Action Party have proposed an extension of maternity leave to 14 weeks; Senator Verónica Delgadillo, of Movimiento Ciudadano, presented a proposal for an extension to 16 weeks; Congresswoman Ivonne Cisneros, of Morena, proposed an extension to 18 weeks. On the other hand, the initiative to extend maternity leave to 24 weeks, subscribed by more than 90 legislators of the PAN, PRI and PRD Coalition, and the one presented by Movimiento Ciudadano were rejected.
Despite the profound changes that have occurred in the social and working life of Mexican families, the length of maternity leave continues to be a pending issue to support working mothers in Mexico. However, the period 2024-2030 could achieve the longed-for extension of maternity and paternity leave, since it is already part of the Women's Rights Axis which, within the framework of the Care System, seeks to build a more equitable and fair welfare model that would lead to a redistribution of the burden of care in Mexico.
Closing the breastfeeding gap in Mexico is possible. We will talk about this at the 9th National Breastfeeding Forum 2024, next Wednesday, September 11 at the Universidad Iberoamericana. The call is for different sectors to contribute to generate a friendly environment for breastfeeding, based on the recommendations derived from the Breastfeeding Friendly Country Index (BBF) that will be presented at the Forum. Don't miss it, learn all the details here.
*Dámaris Sosa de Antuñano is Federal Advocacy Coordinator of the Pact for Early Childhood. She is a dental surgeon by the Universidad Veracruzana, Master in Health Sciences, with a main field of study in Epidemiology by the UNAM, and a PhD candidate in Public Administration by the INAP. For more than a decade she has worked in the Federal Public Administration and has experience in evaluation of health services, public health, public health policies aimed at early childhood and people in vulnerable situations. Author of several publications and speaker in national and international forums. She enjoys badminton, reading, coloring, traveling and hiking. In the Pact for Early Childhood, she contributes to make public policies aimed at children under 6 years of age a national priority. damaris.sosa@pactoprimerainfancia.org.mx
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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