Nursing Moms Post Their Struggles On Twitter, Researchers Noticed
Breastfeeding moms are taking to Twitter to talk about their struggles, and it may prove to be incredibly beneficial. can be a beautiful journey, but it doesn’t always come without struggles. Mothers everywhere can have , and if they don’t receive the proper support and resources, they need it could end the journey before she had intended. In the age of technology and , moms are using these outlets to vent and share their struggles with other moms. They are finding support and friends, but this could mean even more when it comes to finding real solutions.
According to and , researchers from Penn State and Dalhousie University have been looking through tweets sent from nursing mothers to try and figure out moms' breastfeeding behaviors. They have plans for the information that they uncover.
They are hoping that what they find in these tweets can help to create and inform policies and interventions that can help support moms on their breastfeeding journey. They want to look at breastfeeding support, accommodations that can be made at workplaces, and even technology aids like apps. They are creating these tweets because they are “raw” and they are obtained without putting them in an official study to answer a questionnaire.
The study has involved more than 19,000 tweets that are related to breastfeeding, and they used software to separate the positive tweets from the negative tweets. In what may not come as much of a surprise, there were a majority of negative tweets. In total, 29 negative themes were identified, and 21 positive themes. The positive themes were based on bonding and nutritional values.
When it came to the negative trends, there was no short supply. Mothers were tweeting about latching issues, low supply, lack of support, , and criticism that they face when breastfeeding in public. Their aim is to use these trends as factual evidence on why change is needed, and they want this to be used to implement these changes.
For example, one of the negative trends was a lack of places to pump or nurse a baby at work, so changes can be instituted to directly address this need. They also stated that while this particular study was done for breastfeeding, the same technology can be applied to nearly every issue in motherhood, and this may be just the beginning of a new way to help reach mothers out there.
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