From “Nurturing” to “Indecent”: Discomfort Towards Photographs of Breastfeeding Among Adults in Nova Scotia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although the World Health Organization recommends continued breastfeeding for 2 years and beyond, adherence rates are low in Canada and the United States. One major barrier to following this recommendation is an unsupportive culture and social stigma around breastfeeding. Our objective was to assess attitudes towards photographs of breastfeeding children of varying ages and locations among the general population in Nova Scotia, Canada. In a self-administered questionnaire, participants recruited in public spaces were asked to react to six photographs depicting women breastfeeding children aged 2 weeks, 13 months and 30 months in both private (e.g., home) and public (e.g., store) locations. Participants self-rated their comfort levels using a visual analog scale (VAS; scale from 0 [not at all comfortable] to 10 [very comfortable]), and also provided open-ended qualitative reactions to the images. Sociodemographic information was also collected. We surveyed 229 participants (60% women, 40% men). Mean age was 44 years (range 19–95 years), 73% self-identified as white, and 77% were born in Canada. The majority of participants were parents (69%), and 69% of parents reported that their children were breastfed. Mean (95% CI) self-rated comfort differed significantly by location and child age. VAS scores indicated higher comfort for images in private locations (7.9, 7.7–8.1) compared to public locations (7.3, 7.0–7.5; P = 0.001), and for images of younger (8.5, 8.3–8.7) compared to older children (6.9, 6.6–7.2; P < 0.001). Women and parents had higher comfort with all images compared to men and non-parents (P < 0.05). Younger participants (19–29 years) were less comfortable with images of public breastfeeding compared to older participants (P < 0.05). Text-based reactions suggest lower approval of images of public breastfeeding and increased child age, but varied highly, including comments from “nurturing” to “indecent”. Comfort and acceptance of breastfeeding among adults in Nova Scotia is influenced by location and child age. Negative perceptions of public breastfeeding and continued breastfeeding into young childhood may affect adherence to global breastfeeding recommendations. Mount Saint Vincent University New Scholars Grant, CN Student Research Internship.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".