Who do low-income, urban mothers perceive as providing current infant feeding recommendations?

Background: Mothers receive infant feeding advice from various people.  Perceptions about importance of advice providers’ opinions and currency of information may have implications for mothers’ feeding practices.  We explore the characteristics of members of mothers’ infant care support networks whom mothers perceive as providing current feeding information and whose opinions are important.

Methods: New and expecting low-income, urban mothers in Memphis, TN (N=107) were interviewed to identify infant care support network members and feeding advice received.  For members whose opinions were perceived as important, factors related to the perception of the currency of information provided were explored using 2-level logistic regression models.

Results: Mothers listed 374 network members. Ninety-five mothers (89%) identified someone whose opinion about infant feeding was important.  Of 212 members identified as having important opinions, 73 (34%) were perceived as providing current infant feeding information.  Members who provide advice on infant feeding (OR=2.43, 95%CI: 1.06-5.54) or mothers trust about infant feeding (OR=4.33, 95%CI: 1.57-11.97) were more likely to be perceived as providing current information compared to those who did not fit these descriptions.  Mothers' partners were identified as having important opinions, but were less likely to be perceived as providing current information (OR=0.26, 95%CI: 0.12-0.59) than those who are not partners.

Conclusion: Those who have important opinions and give advice or are trusted about infant feeding are perceived as providing current information. Future studies should investigate the extent to which these individuals have current infant feeding information and how to enhance currency of feeding information among partners.