The association between intimate partner violence and breastfeeding practices in Cameroon: An analysis from demographic and health survey of 2018

Intimate partner violence is a major public health concern around the world. While its degrading effects on maternal health are well documented, it is not clear establishing a link with child health outcomes, especially on breastfeeding practices. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the association between Intimate partner violence and breastfeeding practices in Cameroon using data from the 2018 demographic and health survey. Intimate partner violence is apprehended from its three dimensions (physical, emotional and sexual violence), and the two key breastfeeding practices are considered: early initiation to breastfeeding within an hour of delivery for children under 24 months of age, and exclusive breastfeeding during 24 h preceding the mother's interview for children under 6 months. The results of descriptive statistics suggest that 51.91 % (n = 1704) of mothers whose infants between 0 and 23 months of age who acquired early initiation to breastfeeding and 39.61 % (n = 484) of mothers whose infants between 0 and 5 months of age practiced exclusive breastfeeding. The estimated results of the logistic regression model suggest that emotional violence and sexual violence were significantly associated with low chances of early initiation to breastfeeding (OR: 0.675; 95 % CI: 0.528, 0.864; p < 0.05; OR: 0.741; 95 % CI: 0.525, 1.046; p < 0.1), which is not the case with physical violence which has no significant association. No dimension of Intimate partner violence was associated with exclusive breastfeeding, independently or with control for infant, maternal and household characteristics. We further performed robustness analysis, and the findings suggest that the associations are robust to consider another measure of Intimate partner violence and the duration of maternity leave. Thus, to improve breastfeeding practices, in particular early initiation to breastfeeding, public decision-makers should strengthen the fight against domestic violence by emphasizing sexual and emotional violence. This paper provides a benchmark for several future investigations that could discuss other breastfeeding practices and the policy challenges towards the length of maternity leave.