Benefits for employees and their children exist as well from breastfeeding. These benefits include facilitating the mother's postpartum recovery, reducing the incidence of illness in infants, providing the most complete source of nourishment for infants, creating a special bond between mother and infant, enhancing the mother's self-esteem and confidence, and reducing the risk of breast cancer. Nevertheless, although 55 percent of working mothers try breast-feeding, only 24 percent of part-time and 12.5 percent of full-time working mothers actually continue breast-feeding for 5 to 6 months.

Ways To Support Employees

• allowing breaks, flexible work hours, and part-time work or job sharing, so that women can pump their milk or breastfeed their children
• offering breastfeeding mothers a private place that is comfortable and clean so that they can express their milk during work hours (in addition, if companies rent or purchase an electric breastpump, they can reduce the amount of time needed by employees to express their milk)
• providing a leave policy that enables mothers to establish a breastfeeding routine and milk supply before returning to work.

• providing a small refrigerator for safe storage of breast milk
• arranging for on-site or near-site child care so that infants can be breastfed during the day
• providing information to all employees on the benefits of breastfeeding, on company policies, and on services available to support breastfeeding women
• creating support groups for working parents
• educating staff about why breastfeeding employees need support
• offering a lactation professional on-site to provide breastfeeding education, counseling, and support during pregnancy, after delivery, and when the mother begins working again.