Paid maternity leave and its impact on breastfeeding in the United States: an historic, economic, political, and social perspective.

make employment more compatible with breastfeeding include prenatal educational programs designed for working women, provision of “flex-time,” job-sharing, breaks for milk expression or breastfeeding, lactation rooms, on-site availability of electrical breast pumps and refrigerators for breast milk storage, work-based lactation counseling programs and support groups, and on-site or near-site child care centers.5 Left largely unaddressed, at least in the United States, is the issue of maternity leave. The gender character of the American work force has changed dramatically over the last half century (Fig. 1). In 1900, 19% of women were in the work force. Currently, the number has risen to 45%. There was a 200% increase in the number of working women from 1950 to 1990. Sixty-five percent (65%) of all mothers are currently working outside the home.6 In 2004, 52.9% of mothers with children under 1 year of age were in the work force.7 During the 1960s, it was the practice of most women (63%) to quit their jobs prior to giving birth. By the 1980s, only 27% of expectant women did so. In addition, only 17% of women during the 1960s returned to work by 12 months after delivery, compared with 60% in the early 1990s (52% by 6 months). Also in the 1990s, of those mothers who returned to work INTRODUCTION