Duncan Fisher promotes and develops support for parents to advance child health and development. In the last year he has been working with breastfeeding researchers across the world and with the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action to advance the idea of "breastfeeding as teamwork", following striking findings from research of the high gains from engaging with fathers and other family members. In UK he co-founded the Fatherhood Institute and for three years he served on the Board of the Government’s gender equality body, the Equal Opportunities Commission. He manages the website, FamilyIncluded.com, where all recent research on breastfeeding and fathers/families is reported. He initiated and currently manages a website for Cambridge and Princeton Universities reporting research on child welfare and development, ChildandFamilyBlog.com. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in 2008 for his “services to children”. Duncan lives in Wales and divides his time between family work and work to support sustainable economic development in his home country.
I will address seven questions. (1) Why we should engage fathers? (2) What does the World Health Organisation say on this? (3) What are the needs and motivations of fathers? (4) What biological and brain changes take place in men when they cuddle a baby? (5) What difference does engaging fathers make to health outcomes for mother and baby? (6) How to organise engagement with fathers in a health service? (7) Why is it so difficult to maintain strong engagement with fathers?
Breastfeeding programmes that engage fathers are more effective than ones that only involve mothers and professionals. This accords with research that has shown that family is the main influence on breastfeeding. The way that families influence breastfeeding is diverse, depending on the make-up of the family, local culture and location (e.g. urban/rural). The influence of fathers is not necessarily intentional, but what fathers think and do influences the situation in almost every situation. In this presentation I will describe the principles of success that have been learned from programmes with published evaluations. These principles can be summed up in the phrase recently adopted by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, "breastfeeding is teamwork".
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