Creating Friendly Campus to Support Lactating Students in Federal Universities of Nigeria: A case of Federal University Lokoja

Abstract

Lactation is a part and parcel of maternity and infant health, hence, these are often greet with issues in the university environment and the work place in generally. Majority of the students and staff are in their productive stage especially in this part of the country, due to the fact that the educational pursuit of the girl child was not given priority. Lactating parents face great deal of challenge in these period of motherhood, with some having to bring their infant child to school during examination, or leaving them behind at home to take exams, classes, facing embracement from lecturers and colleagues, same is usually experienced by staff of the university that has no personal office to breastfeed their babies, the work environment does not make room to accommodate the mother and child in the work. In most cases, most of the public universities don’t make provision for conducive and comfortable crèche for the lactating parents. This study seeks to advocate the need to Creates a friendly campus to support Lactating Students and Staff to stabilize their academic pursuits and career progression. It explores experiences and challenges encountered by lactating persons on campus. Three objectives were formulated to direct the study. The study adopts descriptive survey, interview and focus group to collect data for the study, and descriptive statistics will be used to analyze the data collected. The population of the study is lactating mothers studying and working in federal university Lokoja.