Life Span Development
In the 21st century, females have been more involved in their careers, and the balance of work and nursing their babies has been challenging. With the growing recognition of the significance of breastfeeding, an increasing number of mothers have chosen to keep breastfeeding their babies. Women empowerment has also encouraged women to keep working to support themselves financially. Therefore, both responsibilities need equal attention from working mothers and its fair if they were to get help from their employers to ease the challenge of nursing;
To help working moms who are breastfeeding, human resource directors can provide flexible break time for lactating mothers. The time needed to feed a baby may vary from time to time (Bradford, Victoria A., et al.). The best way firm management can help with giving break time for the breastfeeding mothers is through allowing the mother to feed when she needs to or when the baby has to feed. Setting a fixed break time may be challenging for the mothers because their babies may need to feed before or after the allocated break time. Hence, giving breastfeeding employees flexible time may be the only actually to help them with the nursing challenge.
Breastfeeding working moms can be provided with nursing stations at work. Since the human resource department is responsible for the day to day activities of the employees, the directors can facilitate the establishment of these stations (Jantzer et al. 282). Organizations need to create space free from other coworker’s intrusion and ample for the lactating moms. In the past years, firms have been providing restrooms as breastfeeding stations, but logically, restrooms cannot be efficient enough. Babies need clean environments, and the restroom is the last place to be considered ample for the working moms to nurse from. If I were an organization’s human resource director, I would facilitate the building of comfortable and clean stations for lactating moms.
Human resource directors can also help working mothers by educating other decision-makers the need for accommodating breastfeeding employees. Some supervisors and managers may be unaware of the breastfeeding needs and end up breaking lactation policy without considering it essential (Anderson, Jenn, et al. 265). Therefore, the human resource director can help by educating them on how the lactation break is vital for working mothers.
Works cited
Anderson, Jenn, et al. “Policies aren’t enough: The importance of interpersonal communication about workplace breastfeeding support.” Journal of Human Lactation 31.2 (2015): 260-266.
Bradford, Victoria A., et al. “Creating Environments to Support Breastfeeding: The Challenges and Facilitators of Policy Development in Hospitals, Clinics, Early Care and Education, and Worksites.” Maternal and child health journal 21.12 (2017): 2188-2198.
Jantzer, Amanda M., Jenn Anderson, and Rebecca A. Kuehl. “Breastfeeding support in the workplace: the relationships among breastfeeding support, work-life balance, and job satisfaction.” Journal of Human Lactation 34.2 (2018): 379-385.