CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Breastfeeding is considered the most complete nutritional source for infants, because, breast milk contains the essential fats, carbohydrates, proteins and immunological factors needed for infants to thrive and resist infection in the formative year.
          Cardwell and Barry, 2004, jones et al, 2003 in their analysis of child survival strategies, identified exclusive breastfeeding from b to u months as the single most effective preventive intervention in reducing child mortality with the potential of saving 1.3 million infants uses annually.
          Similary, leoan-cava et al (2003), have observed that improved breast feeding practices are crucial for child growth and development. However, advocate of breast feeding have noticed that there have been steady decline due to the behaviour of female bankers. This is particularly more pronounced in developing countries, like Nigeria.
          Wagner et al, (2005) have also observed that despite all the recommendations by experts as regard infants breast feeding for the first size months of life, a significant percentage of mothers choose not to breastfeed. Work and family conflict are the major concern to many, if not all, the most female bankers over the world. Most of the banking institution continue to spend resources in an attempt to help their staffs manage family duties and responsibilities at work place; however, work and family boundary (exclusive breastfeeding) have been the most challenging factor associated with female bankers in ikpoba hill, Benin city (cooner 2002)
Some may be due to work factor like female bankers who spend more time in the office.
          Results of studies conducted in developing countries has shown that, nutritional deficiency and growth retardation is a common occurrence amongst children between the age of 3 and 15 months old, owing to sub optional breastfeeding and poor complementary feeding practices (shrimptonetal 2001)
Parts of the efforts to promote inproved breastfeeding practices focused on hospital norms and services, legislations and institutional polices, health workers training, mass media campains, peer counselling and educating, mother to mother support and a combination of these strategies (Green,1999, till et al, 2004) (Quinn et, al, 2005). Specifically, the United States agency for international development (USAID) in 1996, issues a grant to the academy for international development to design and implement a 10-years program, known as the LINKAGES project, to improve breastfeeding practices rapidly and at scare. Unluckily this has not yielded and encouraging result. This is because in African countries, the national rate for early initiation of breastfeeding were low, with Ghana having the lowest rate (35%) following by Madagascar (34%)Quin et al, 2005) as it has been ensured that safety, optimum growth, health survival of the human infants; that duration of the breast feeding may also determine the strength of mother/child born and attachment, yet exclusive breast feeding is not being in full practices among female bankers because of the long time they spend in the office, and non-provision of curech by their management because of the risky environment where they work.