Doctoral research
My doctoral dissertation, Infant feeding practices and maternal work in urban and rural Tamil Nadu, India, was designed to understand changing maternal work patterns and their impact on infant feeding practices and infant growth. This 12-month longitudinal study examined the relationship between maternal work and IYCF practices in urban and rural Tamil Nadu, India, and ultimately how these are related to infant growth outcomes. Furthermore, this study examined allomaternal care and the relationship to IYCF practices, as well as cultural factors that influence infant feeding practices locally. To answer these questions, this study was structured using a life history framework to examine the trade-offs between maternal work and infant feeding strategies, and a biocultural approach to consider the role the social and cultural environment plays in shaping infant feeding and care, as well as the biological implications for infant health and growth outcomes and human life history.
Infants in this study were not meeting the WHO recommendations for infant feeding, and the mean z-scores for almost all of the anthropometric measures were below zero. However, infants who were fed in accordance with the WHO guidelines had higher z-scores compared with infants who were not, emphasizing the importance of infant feeding for infant growth. Breastfeeding was important to the mothers in this study as all participants gave at least one feeding of breastmilk (“ever breastfed”), and the majority of the participants were feeding some breastmilk at the end of the study. In addition, the responses from mothers in the initial, extended interviews indicated that breastfeeding was considered very important for the infant to have good health.