Opinion | Hong Kong must do much more so working mums can keep breastfeeding
- Even in the sprawling government-funded Cyberport, there is not a single nursing room
- From maternity, paternity and childcare leave, to workplace support and facilities, Hong Kong must realise it takes all of society to raise a breastfed child
Every year, in the first week of August, people in more than 120 countries join the global movement to raise public awareness and support for breastfeeding. This can seem strange when women have been breastfeeding for centuries. Only after I became a mum last year did I realise how hard it is to commit to breastfeeding, especially in fast-paced cities like Hong Kong.
As the theme of this year’s World Breastfeeding Week is to make a difference for working parents, let’s talk about how to make breastfeeding at workplaces work.
Indeed, societal factors such as cultural stigma and workplace policy play a decisive role in how long women breastfeed. While 70 per cent of women worldwide breastfeed for at least a year, less than 24 per cent of women in Hong Kong do.
While close to 80 per cent of women in Hong Kong start out breastfeeding and more than half were still doing so four months later, when most mums returned to work, dishearteningly, by six months, only two in five had continued.
