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The Relationship Between Coping, Stress, And Breastfeeding Outcomes, Angela Nicole Sberna

Masters Theses

Background: Breastfeeding is the optimal form of nutrition for infants in their first year of life. While the benefits of breastfeeding are numerous, national rates remain below professional recommendations. Multiple barriers to breastfeeding have been identified, including various sociodemographic, psychosocial, and biomedical and health-carerelated barriers. Maternal stress may be another barrier, as it has been previously associated with breastfeeding outcomes. Coping strategies are used to manage the demands of a stressful environment and can be categorized as problem- or emotion-focused. Emotion regulation emerged from the coping literature, but describes a unique set of techniques that affect the emotion-generating process. Social …