Being ‘paid to breastfeed’ - your thoughts?

[SarahMumsnet]

The BBC's reporting this morning that new mothers living in some areas of Derbyshire and south Yorkshire are to be given vouchers for shops including Matalan, Mothercare and John Lewis if they breastfeed their babies. These will be given out as part of a study by the University of Sheffield, aimed at discovering whether “financial incentives” will increase the uptake of breastfeeding in parts of the country where rates are low; mothers will receive vouchers worth up to £120 if they breastfeed until six weeks, and another £80-worth if they continue to the six-month mark.

The scheme, according the senior researcher on the project, is intended "as a way of acknowledging both the value of breastfeeding to babies, mothers and society, and the effort involved in breastfeeding. Offering financial incentives ... might increase the numbers of babies being breastfed, and complement on-going support for breastfeeding provided by the NHS, local authorities and charities."

We've been asked by the beeb what Mumsnetters make of the idea; what's your reaction?

It will most likely end up as a nice bonus for those who had already decided to bf and were willing to persevere, and another thing to make people feel bad who tried to bf and found they couldn't (for whatever reason).

I'm not sure it will make a difference to those who have no plans to even try. It might make someone who was about to give up at 4 or 5 weeks a bit of a push to hang on another week or two, during which time it might all fall into place, so she might carry on beyond six weeks?

I agree with most posters, it would be better spent on support and additional education for midwives and health visitors.

I live in Sheffield, not sure what areas this scheme is to cover but given all the cuts to children's centres etc. it's a lot.more difficult to access support than it used to be.

When I had ds i was told i would be contacted by a bfspw within days, it didn't happen and i was in such pain. I knew it wasn't right and went to get help myself at a dropin session (which has now closed). This then led to lots of home based support which was perfect as i have a toddler too.

But, i've bf before and am confident (and stubborn) enough to persist and find help, £200 wouldn't have made a difference to me, real life support made a huge difference.

Fantastic, but only if I can get a back-payment! I breastfed DS1 until 10mo and DS2 until 6mo. £400 would be lovely

I find this really interesting. Surely before any initiative is introduced, some effort to understand why women don't start or continue to breastfeed need to be understood? I have never seen a study reflecting that. All sorts of assumptions are being made by introducing this scheme.

It made me very angry when I heard this on the radio this morning. I think it is irrelevant if you breastfeed or not, as someone said up thread, we should all be angry about how patronising this scheme is and how it demonstrates a lack of understanding of what women are going through in the weeks after giving birth.

I'm so cross I can't articulate what I want to say very well, but on the BBC news page, the Royal College of Midwives say exactly what most on this thread are saying, more support needed for women not shopping vouchers.

I agree with what a lot of other posters have said, it is far too simplistic a way of 'encouraging' bf.
The money would be much better spent training HVs in bf support, or creating more bf support worker roles and funding their travel.
It's patronising to the people in the trial. I understand that there is poverty in this country but bf is FREE anyway!
How would you police it?
And talk about a quick way to de-motivate the millions of women who bf for the love of their child.

• loving it, not living it...apparently my iPhone is more ambivalent on the subject

But seriously, I believe more human support will make the difference to people continuing to breastfeed.

It reminds me of one of the Superfreakonomics experiments where they gave underachieving US high school students a cash reward for each good grade they got. Can't recall if that worked or not -it's a while since I watched the documentary. Similar idea to paying kids to stay on longer at high school too I suppose (though not sure if they still do this). I think you have to bear in mind that the trial is not aimed at women who want to breast feed but have encountered difficulties which have caused them to stop (due to lack of support or otherwise), but those who would not have considered it in the first place. I'll reserve judgement until after the trial I suppose.

According to the woman on Radio 4 this morning, in some areas people have been paid to lose weight and it has been successful.

She also said in some cities, 1 an 5 will bf whilst a few miles away, 4 out of 5 will. She said it has become a socio/economic issue. Hence the economic incentives for some areas.

1 it treats all women as having Pavlovian response- ignoring the complexities in breastfeeding. Good doggy.

2 Its a poor experiment in its set up - this will purely rely on "honest" answering of questions when the midwife does her flying visit.

3 This is meant to charge us all up into a pro and anti debate when the real issue is being ignored. Good doggy.

But Excuse - those different rates are due to socioeconomic factors, not just economics. So in poorer areas it might be that mothers are more affected by attitudes such as "boobs/women's bodies are for men to look at" or "only hippies breastfeed".

IMO cash incentives won't change those attitudes, whereas more positive advertising would. Imagine if there were more BFing women on TV, for example. Not in an obvious in-your-face-way, but just sitting in the background on soaps for example. Or if we saw pics of celebs BFing.

I am pretty sure that £200 would be better spent ifused to pay for a full days worth of support for every mother. Imagine having a Mothers Support person visiting you for say a day or 2 half days after birth. answering your questions, teaching you to breast feed and just being there. Obviously some could opt out of this help. And they would be creating jobs at the same time. Not just throwing more money into the pit.

I agree with fluffy I am not an animal or a child who needs incentivising.

Unfortunately I couldn't breastfeed as much as I wanted to as mentally I had some issues regarding breastfeeding. So if I was being offered £200 I would feel like my issues were being minimalised and could add to the risk of pnd.

This money would be better spent on offering advice and help for breastfeeding if this is what is deemed the most important factor in bringing up a child.

OR....it could be put into parenting classes, childcare help, health visitor checks, midwifery services, books for children or any of the other critical parts of having and bringing up a child.

I'm very pro breastfeeding and do think it is in any country's interests to encourage it. But this seems simplistic and ill-thought-out. There are so many reasons why women don't or can't breastfeed, and of those I think

"Well I could but I won't unless there's something in it for me"

must be a vanishingly tiny proportion!

Would have been nice a few years ago when mine were babies though

It makes about as much sense as giving people financial incentives to get married; that is, no sense at all.

Completely agree with those saying the money would be better used on raising awareness of the health and longer-term financial benefits of breastfeeding, support and guidance for breastfeeding mothers, and also support for those who can't or don't want to on other ways to feed.

I live in South Yorkshire and took my 3 month old to the GP for suspected reflux. She automatically assumed I was FF and then got confused when I said I was giving 10+ feeds a day. I'm still breast feeding now at 7 months.

Vouchers for me would have been nice, a bonus for something I was doing anyway and to help through a tough financial time but obviously I am breast feeding because I want to.

It would be lovely to get to a stage where doctors automatically assume you are BF but these vouchers will not make that happen.

I had reasonable support in hospital, they asked for me to stay in one more night as dd still hadn't fed properly. I got one to one support for short time to sort positioning/latch and on day 3 my baby finally got it and we could go home. Once home I got no support but researched things myself like cluster feeding etc and we have muddled along till now.

I think more support at hospital and once you are home is vital. I have never got my baby latched on one side without pain so I just feed off one boob now. In the first few weeks you are not in the real world enough to fight to find that support yourself, if it came knocking on your door you'd welcome it with open arms.

I was unable to breastfeed, despite all the right support etc. and felt horribly guilty and upset about it, just when I was trying to settle in to being a new mum. I was already doing my best and no voucher would have helped.

I think it offers all the wrong motivations for breastfeeding. It isn't something you should be "paid" to do.

The money saved on formula is financial enough reward.

Too many mothers don't breastfeed because in the early days it is the harder option. I've got friends who said they wanted to breastfeed, were well educated as to the benefits and had the support offered. Yet within a week they were formula feeding.

"It was too painful"
"I couldn't get the baby to latch"
"My baby lost weight and wasn't thriving"
"My baby just wanted to feed all the time, he obviously wasn't getting enough and it was exhausting"

One friend said she was determined to breastfeed before giving birth. She had trouble getting the baby to latch and said it was painful. I arranged a breast feeding counsellor to visit her at her home to help her with positioning and to give her general support. She ended up cancelling the appointment and sending her husband out to get formula because she couldn't bear it any longer (baby was 3 days old).

There is the support out there (not always obviously but it is there if people want it) but people are too quick to give up. Medical professionals are too quick to say stop as well. I had awful problems and was told by a GP that surely I was going to stop and put DD on forumula soon so she would sleep better. She was 6 weeks old.

I did go on to BF for a full year but it was education (I knew it was better for me and baby), convenience (after a tricky start it was much easier than faffing with bottles) and money saved on buying formula that motivated me. You have to really WANT to BF though and I don't think paying mothers will create the right motivations.

Also, sometimes it isn't right for everyone. Some people genuinely can't. Surely this will make them feel worse at a very vunerable time.

I expect the reporting on this is being a bit disengenous. Sounds like an academic study on the role of incentives in public health rather than a proposed govt initiative. They have probably chosen bfing to study exactly because of the media storm it would create - thus improving their research "impact".

Knowing that I am doing what is best for my child's health, my health and the environment was all the encouragement I needed. Surely if they are serious about raising the rates of breastfeeding then they should look at support during the early days/weeks is the most important. Stop all the crap advice going around

And for goodness sake lets not talk about "women who can't breastfeed" as the norm. They are the very very small minority, though allot of people put themselves in this category who find it difficult.

And lets not talk about breast being best and the benefits of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is the biological norm, lets discuss the risks of formula feeding.

For me personally, the reason i didn't couldn't bf was that there was absolutely zero support in the hospital, even though i ended up in tears repeatedly asking for it and my baby ended up in NICU due to dangerously low blood sugar from not feeding even though I thought he was feeding.

Similarly i asked the midwife and hv for support and apart from 'go to the local children's centre and ask' i got nothing.

I established a supply by using the hospital breast pump and so carried on expressing and feeding once home, but had to stop at 6 weeks as i couldn't cope with the demands of having to express and bottle feed which wad twice as much work as doing one or the other.

I was devastated that i could no longer give my baby breast milk, but offering me £200 in this situation would have quite frankly been an insult.

I think it's a terrible idea and agree with pp's that it would be a much better idea to plough that money into support not only for breastfeeding but also for those women who find for whatever that they cant breastfeed their child (rather than don't want to).

These mothers already feel bad and that they are a bad mother for not doing so. The support they receive is shocking to help them deal with this, and if they go to a feeding support group, get an earful from La Leche about how they have failed as a mother. (this is not to say all round the country they are like this)

What happens with those who dual feed, technically they are still bf just not exclusively for various reasons including medical ones. I had a run in with La Leche over this too.

Or those parents who have multiple births, where hospitals don't encourage them to ebf for fear of depression. These parents would probably find that money useful but is their mental health really worth compromising on.

All in all I don't think it's going to have the result that is intended and risks causing further issues with those who for whatever reason cant/don't ebf. Put the money somewhere else earlier on in the support system.

I can't believe we are employing public servants to come up with ridiculous ideas like this. What a sheer waste of money during the austerity period we are in.

It's a mad idea because there is no way to prove a woman is breast feeding. I suspect that some women will 'milk the system' ( ha ha) and see it as an easy way to get their hands on hard working tax payers' money.

I think we will need to wait until the results of the initial study are published - they will undoubtedly look at how mothers feel about it as well as the raw stats of breastfeeding continuation.

Incentives to adopt healthy 'behaviours' do seem to make a difference in other areas of concern, and breastfeeding is absolutely not unique in being complex and related to all sorts of social and psychological as well as practical issues.

Infant feeding can't be filed under 'personal choice' - it's far more than this. How much of a 'choice' is it, if you have friends telling you bf is 'disgusting'? Or if your mother tells you you are being 'selfish'? Or your partner tells you formula milk is better? Or if you feel embarrassed to breastfeed in front of other people in case they comment? Or if you long to breastfeed, but think there's something wrong if your baby wants to feed frequently? Etc Etc Etc.

Vouchers may go somewhere to indicate that breastfeeding has a value and is worth it! I don't know.

I do know that anyone taking it personally as a judgment on their own feeding does not need to.

Would families in poverty default to formula feeding if milk tokens didn't pay for the formula? Unfortunately I can't think of a manageable way to make sure those that genuinely struggled physically, emotionally or practically with breast feeding could still get formula paid for, but if the money that pays for milk tokens was used to pay for breastfeeding support, with funding of formula feeding as the exception rather than the rule, it would be more effective. I agree with those above who call for an investigation into why people choose to formula feed, and that normalising breastfeeding in the media and promoting celeb bf would be effective.