How do working mothers in the informal economy breastfeed their children without maternity/labour protections? Using 150 interviews with domestic workers, vendors, home-based & pheri working mothers in Delhi, @antaraxrai, @sosurie & I share new work. Read: rb.gy/x2gxum 
79% of the sample was breastfeeding. Of the 21 women with a child under 6 months, 14 reported exclusively breastfeeding. However, 11 of them had fed water/other food too in the last 24 hours, and 2 of the remaining 3 were at risk of disruption b/c of pressure to return to work.
Informally working women need to balance earning income with optimal care for their children & themselves. Six months exclusive breastfeeding was difficult as 38% returned to work under 3 months of delivery (and 60% within 6 months of delivery), leading to early weaning.
90% aware of the importance of EBF but only in the standard language of public health messaging. Effective knowledge (why, what if, how) is missing, which hinders mothers from making everyday decisions + how to deal with difficult trade-offs.
Effective & adequate child-care options missing in large parts due to limited Anganwadi timings, no affordable+safe creches, unsafe physical infra - need constant attention, fear injury, hard to carry & care with time/physically-intensive work, not always welcome by employers.
How can we do better? 1. Delay return to work (w/ targeted cash transfers that compensate for loss of income?) 2. Increase proximity b/w mother & child (with adequate child care infra) 3. Improve home & workplace conditions (w/better infra at residences & public spaces)
4. Effective knowledge on breastfeeding & ECD practices among all stakeholders (w/improved translation of simplified scientific knowledge in ICDS curriculum & training) 5. Enhancing problem-solving capacity of the mother (w/localised counselling programmes reflecting their lives)
The research attempts to address a structural gap in current knowledge on the health of informal workers more broadly and with respect to maternal and child health outcomes for informally working mothers and their children specifically. Read on that here: bit.ly/3ze8jOm
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