Communicating Breastfeeding Benefits and Supporting New Mothers’ Wellbeing: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

This Research Topic is part of a series marking World Breastfeeding Week, hosted in conjunction with Frontiers in Sociology.

The companion volume can be found here: Breastfeeding: a sociological reflection on new mothers’ wellbeing

While breastfeeding is a biological act, a comprehensive study on breastfeeding needs to consider women’s experience around the world from a behavioral, social, cultural, and anthropological perspective. Women live different breastfeeding journeys due to their geographical location, the social and anthropological support they can benefit from, and the communication they experience.

Contemporary culture often equates good mothering with breastfeeding but is there in place a valid system to mentally and physically support new mothers to breastfeed? We believe communication science can play a critical role in illustrating the benefits of breastfeeding to the communities concerned, supporting new mothers through their journey in early motherhood, and promoting social inclusion.

To celebrate UN breastfeeding week and raise awareness about the value of breastfeeding and supporting new mothers’ wellbeing, Frontiers is launching a new series to gather multi-disciplinary insights on the breastfeeding experience of women around the world. To address these questions in a cross-disciplinary way, we welcome submissions from fields such as sociology, nursing, health education, public administration, policy and communication.

Topics we would like to explore include:

• Breastfeeding support from international institutions: is the narrative used to promote breastfeeding inclusive and able to resonate through different cultures and habits?
• Evidence-based practices in effectively communicating breastfeeding promotion messages.
• Social and cultural barriers to breastfeeding.
• Nursing in public debates: from #normalizebreastfeeding to social media bans of pictures of nursing mothers.
• Comparative analysis of social acceptance of nursing across cultural groups and across geographic boundaries, socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, and social identities.
• Variations in the reception of public health campaigns on breastfeeding due to class and cultural factors.
• Pressure to breastfeed: why the mantra of breastfeeding is best could alienate new mothers.
• How health professionals can work on their communication to support new mothers’ physical and mental health in relation to breastfeeding.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.