Keep on keeping on? Issues relating to duration in women's breastfeeding practice.

The UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding duration rates in the industrialised world. WHO guidance recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life. In the UK data indicates that incidence falls far short of this recommendation. In this symposium we want to explore issues around duration. We will be using research papers on breastfeeding in public; teenagers experiences of breastfeeding; the representation of long-term breastfeeding and women's experiences of breastfeeding for six months as vehicles for this. The four papers draw on research and scholarship from a range of academic discipline and public health nursing research. By the end of the symposium we hope to have explored the interfaces between these areas and identified possible future avenues for inquiry and implications for practice, specifically in relation to the duration of breastfeeding.