A study on the employment status, educational level, and breastfeeding among korean mothers

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing breastfeeding experience of Korean women. The subjects of the study were 1,063 mothers with experience of childbirth. The age of mothers ranged 21 to 49 years old. The mean age of the participants was 39.48 years; 554 (52.1%) of them were in their forties. Of the 1063 participants, 821 (77.2%) mothers had experience of breastfeeding. In breastfeeding experience according to general characteristics, there were significant differences in breastfeeding experience regarding mother's age (χ2 = 26.938, p < .001), education level of mothers (χ2 = 12.774, p < .001), employment status of mothers (χ2 = 7.761, p = .005), and subjective health status (χ2 = 6.436, p = .040). Results from logistic regression analysis showed that mother's age (OR = .555, CI = .424~.728), education (OR = 1.481, CI = 1.090~2.013), employment status of mother (OR = .697, CI = .518~.939) were found to be factors significantly influenced on the breastfeeding of mothers.