Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Jun 16, 2017
Open Peer Review Period: Jun 16, 2017 - Aug 10, 2017
Date Accepted: Sep 20, 2017
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Online Perceptions of Mothers About Breastfeeding and Introducing Formula: Qualitative Study
Background:
Although the benefits of breastfeeding are well established for babies and their mothers, many women give formula to their infants. Whether to breastfeed or to give infant formula is a complex decision to make. Many parents use the Internet to find information and support that relate to infant feeding decisions.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to analyze the perceptions of mothers, who are discussing the topic on Web forums, about introducing infant formula.
Methods:
This is a qualitative, descriptive, and cross-sectional study on online data from parenting Web forums. The text was analyzed using qualitative content analysis.
Results:
The analysis resulted in 1 main theme, “balancing between social expectations and confidence in your parental ability,” which is further divided into 3 themes: “striving to be a good mother,” “striving for your own well-being,” and “striving to discover your own path.”
Conclusions:
Breastfeeding is complex, and health care personnel can, with a more open approach toward formula, create better support for mothers by helping them to be more confident in their parental ability.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.