The World Health Organisation says children should be given nothing other than breast milk for the first six months. But many domestic workers are often left with an impossible choice: breastfeed your child or pay the bills and that has a massive knock-on effect that could affect a child for life.
The Unemployment Insurance Fund UIF could help with partially paid maternity leave of up to four months, allowing her to breastfeed exclusively for longer. But even if more employers registered their domestic workers just 20 of people do the UIF has been mired in massive operational mismanagement for years, leaving many entitled to funds left without.
A coalition of South Africas leading maternal health, nutrition and early childhood development experts say a languishing proposal for a monthly cash transfer, in the form of a maternity grant, for low-income pregnant women could be the answer.
Intodays newsletter, Tanya Pampalone explains why domestic workers arent breastfeeding.Sign up for our newsletter today.
When Priscilla had her first child, it never even occurred to her that she could keep her job and breastfeed. Breaks for breastfeeding and expressing milk were for office workers, not live-in domestic workers like her.
So, during her eight-week maternity leave, she carefully planned out how things would work.
