Infant Feeding in Leicester City - East Midlands Public Health ...

18over 35. It can be seen that the pattern found in our analysis is not unusual and agrees with nationalresults. It is interesting to note that overall breastfeeding initiation levels are lower Leicester City for all agegroups than those reported in the national Infant Feeding Survey.Similar findings to those from Leicester City are reported throughout the literature. Tarrant et al(9)conducted a survey of women attending antenatal clinics in Dublin. They found that mothers aged 35 orover were approximately five times more likely than younger women to both initiate breastfeeding and tostill be breastfeeding at 6 weeks. Bick et.al(10) found similar results in a study based in Birmingham. Theyfound that mothers who were aged 25 or under were significantly less likely to have ever breastfed theirbabies than all older age groups. This study did not report any a significant difference in the age at whichbreastfeeding was stopped between the different age groups. These results are also echoed by Barneset.al(11) who investigated breastfeeding intentions among pregnant women. They found that older mothers(aged 35 and over) were nearly three times more likely to intend to breastfeed than their youngercounterparts (aged 19 and under).A study by Savage et.al(12) examined weaning practices in Glasgow and also found significant differencesby the age of the mother. They found that 60% of mothers aged 16-20 had introduced solid foods whentheir babies were less than 10 weeks old compared to 32% of mothers aged 21-25 and 25% of those aged36-40. Whilst this study does not focus specifically on breastfeeding practices, it is interesting to examinedifferences in mother‟s approaches to infant feeding.Dyson et al(13) investigated why differences in breastfeeding intention and practice vary between teenagemothers and older mothers. In an initial questionnaire they found that moral norms were the most predictivefactors reported by teenage mothers (19 and under) in their intentions related to infant feeding. They weresignificantly more likely to feel that bottle feeding was the morally correct behaviour (described as feelingsof responsibility to perform or refuse to perform certain behaviours) compared to mothers aged 20 andover. This finding was also a major theme which emerged from the subsequent focus groups conductedwith young pregnant women. Teenagers who intended to breastfeed felt the need to justify their decisionand were concerned about being labelled as „lazy‟. Other factors affecting intention to breastfeed identifiedin these focus groups included the sexuality of the breast and concerns about breastfeeding in public whichwere linked to young women‟s confidence and self esteem.Ineichen et.al(14) also conducted a study into the attitudes of teenage mothers towards breastfeeding. Theresponses of young mothers (aged 20 and under) were extracted from a national survey, meaning that