Page 130 - CONFERENCE BOOK OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GENDER, CULTURE AND SOCIETY (ICGCS) 2021

CONFERENCE PROGRAM AND ICGCS 2021

ABSTRACT BOOK

Gender, Health and Nutrition

The Description of Husbands’ Support to the Practice of

Exclusive Breastfeeding Among 20 – 45 Year-Old

Women

Roro Rukmi Windi Perdani, Suwaib Amiruddin,

University Lampung

Background: exclusively breast feeding is very important for babies to support their brain development,

immunity, and is the best first nutrition. The practice of exclusive breast feeding needs physical, emotional
and informational support from mother’s surrounding.

Objective: to describe father’s support of the practice of exclusive breast feeding
Method: this was observational descriptive study which was done on May 2021. The respondents were 20 –
45 year-old women which joined voluntarily in the research. The sampling method was simple random

sampling. The validated instrument used in the study was questionnaire which was adapted from the
previous study. The questionnaire was distributed through google form. There were 29 questions which

consist of 4 types of supports : emotional (question 1-7), informational (question 8-14), physical (question 15-
22) and the last is appraisal (question 23-29) bn b v The data got in the study was then analysed that
consist of average and frequency.

Key finding: there were 73 respondents with the average age was 34,6 years old. Most of them (61,6%) was
bachelor degree on the other hand, most of their spouses (27,5%) were master degree. Furthermore, civil

servant was the top ranked of respondent’s occupation the same as their husbands’. Most of the
respondents (76,7%) gave exclusive breastfeeding. Emotional support consists of 7 questions, from the

data, many husband supported their wives in the ways of giving compliment (26% answer often time),
never said their wives looked fatter (64,4%), did not feel being disturbed in the middle of the night when

the babies ask for breastfeeding (75,3% answer never), create conducive situation (61,6%), paid attention of
wives’ nutrition (45,2%). But, many husbands (42,5%) seldom awoke at night when their wives breastfed.
The second endorsement was informational endorsement. There were also 7 questions, the result showed

surprising data as there was as many as 31,5% spouses gave references about breastfeeding, furthermore
most of them (30,1%) never gave any information about it. On the contrary many of them looked for

information about breastfeeding, and they mostly never forbid their wives to find any knowledge about
breastfeeding and never got angry when the wives tried to buy some magazines related to breastfeeding.

The next support was physical one. The data describe that most of the men helped their partners for
example, changed the diapers (42,5% answered always), held the babies (45,2% said often times), never felt

hesitate when changing the diaper (80,8%), never give complementary feeding under the age of 6 month
(73,6%), always cooked their wives while they breastfed (56,2%), always bought them supplement (47,9%),
also often helped household tasks (39,7%) and never grumbled when helping their wives (72,2%). The last

contribution was appraisal. The highest percentage of each question figure that husbands motivated the
women in breastfeeding, suggested to give enough breastmilk, paid attention to nutritional needs of the

women, did not suggest formula when there were only a little of breastmilk, suggested exclusively
breastfeeding.

Conclusion: the study demonstrate that most of the husbands gave emotional, informational, physical and
appraisal support to their wives.

Keywords: breastfeeding, husband, support, wife

Short Biography:

Roro Rukmi Windi Perdani, is a pediatrician and lecturer. I was born at May 5th 1981 in

Telukbetung Bandar Lampung. I have been working at Department of Pediatric of

Mecical Faculty, University of Lampung. I also worked as pediatrician at Abdul Moeloek
Hospital (Educational Hospital).

Suwaib Amiruddin, is a lecturer at Faculty of Social and Poli

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