Post-natal depression isn’t restricted to mothers but is high among fathers too, which then results in the dangerous trend of newborns not being exclusively breastfed; more so in the event of the birth of a girl child.
This was found in an observational study ‘Corelation of infant gender with postpartum maternal and parental depression and exclusive breastfeeding rates,’ conducted at the Department of Paediatrics, St. Stephen’s Hospital. The study also showed that the trend worsens if the second-born is also a girl.
Boys were more likely to be exclusively breastfed (64.46% versus 35.54%). In second-order births, if the first born was a girl and the second baby was also a girl, 23% were exclusively breastfed compared with 86% if it was a boy after a girl. Among parents who scored high on postnatal depression scale, no babies were exclusively breastfed.
It also found that among 25 babies who received no breast milk, 21 were girls and 4 were boys. The study, published in an international medical journal – Breastfeeding Medicine — earlier this week found that paternal depression correlates closely with maternal postpartum depression and low exclusive breastfeeding of girls.
Dr. Jacob Puliyel, who is one of the authors of the study said: “Through the study we propose to look into parental postnatal depression and exclusive breast feeding after the baby’s birth. We went in with the hypothesis that in a society with gender bias the father’s Edinburgh postnatal depression scale score may also be influenced by the sex of the newborn.”
Parents were interviewed 48 hours after delivery, after the mother had recovered from labour and father had settled the initial birth-related formalities. “When studying first-born children, there was little difference in the rate of breastfeeding according to gender. Breastfeeding of first-born girls was 78% and it was 84% in boys,’’ noted the study.
