When breastfeeding meets work: Impact of daily action regulation at the breastfeeding-work interface among breastfeeding working mothers.

Authors

Yanwei Shi, Julan Xie, Zhiqing E Zhou, Ya Luo

Published in

Journal of occupational health psychology. Jul 20, 2026. Epub Jul 20, 2026.

Abstract

Work and breastfeeding responsibilities can often interfere with each other for breastfeeding working mothers who pump breast milk at work. While prior research has explored how contextual social support and organizational policies help these mothers manage work-breastfeeding challenges, the active self-initiated strategies breastfeeding working mothers can use to navigate these roles have been largely overlooked. This study addresses a critical gap in how breastfeeding working mothers can proactively regulate their actions to achieve desirable outcomes. From an action regulation perspective, we proposed the concept of action regulation at the breastfeeding-work interface (AR-BW; a domain-specific form of proactivity defined as breastfeeding working mothers' proactive and goal-directed behaviors to balance responsibilities in breastfeeding and work domains) and examined the associations of AR-BW with breastfeeding-related and work-related outcomes specifically for mothers who pumped breast milk at work. We conducted a daily diary study with 156 breastfeeding working mothers over 10 workdays to examine whether and how their daily AR-BW is related to their work- and breastfeeding-related outcomes. Multilevel path analyses showed that breastfeeding working mothers' daily AR-BW was positively associated with their next-day job performance and breastfeeding-work balance self-efficacy through increased breastfeeding-work enrichment and decreased breastfeeding-work interference. Moreover, the negative relationship between AR-BW and breastfeeding-work interference was stronger for breastfeeding working mothers perceiving higher levels of breastfeeding stigma. Our findings highlight the active, agentic role of breastfeeding working mothers in managing breastfeeding-work demands through self-regulation, extending beyond prior research on external supports. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:
42475038
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 20 Jul 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.