Impact of labour market reintegration on breastfeeding among mothers of 6-month-olds.

Aim: In Hungary, almost all mothers, depending on their previous employment status, were supported at 70% of their previous income through 2 years postpartum. This paper investigates the impact of postnatal employment, between the birth and 6 months, on breastfeeding through 6 months of age. Methods: Analysis was based on responses from 7756 mothers of children aged 5 to 7 months, who participated in the first two waves of the longitudinal study 'Cohort '18 - Growing Up in Hungary'. When examining the association between employment and breastfeeding, confounding variables were justified based on theoretical foundations, visualised by a directed acyclic graph. Key findings: Overall, 3.4% of the mothers had already gone back to work; 50% of the children were being breastfed, with 34.6% partially and 15.4% exclusively. For the groups of mothers with basic or tertiary education, employment activity was not related to breastfeeding rates, even when confounding factors were controlled. Among mothers with secondary education, lower multivariable odds of exclusive breastfeeding (OR = 0.27, 95% CI = 0.09, 0.79) were observed where they were in active employment. Conclusion: Further studies are needed to investigate the education-specific association between labour market reintegration and breastfeeding, in order to inform policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]