Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
Workplace lactation support attenuates the association between early maternal return to work and preschool overweight/obesity in China
Originally published 2026-09-09 · Frontiers in Public Health
Frontiers Media SA · DOI 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1881827 ↗
Working-family evidence
Work, care and the whole person.
Examines return timing, feeding and preschool weight while explicitly treating workplace-support subgroup findings as exploratory, modeling careful interpretation of long-range family claims.
Directly examines work and family life, parenting, caregiving or employment policies for families.
Editorial reading guide · Kindness
How cautiously should we interpret claims linking return-to-work support with later child health?
Examines return timing, feeding and preschool weight while explicitly treating workplace-support subgroup findings as exploratory, modeling careful interpretation of long-range family claims.
Study context
1,633 mother–child dyads in Jiangxi Province, China, recruited in 2023–2024.
Age / stage: Children aged 36–72 months; mothers recalling postpartum work and feeding.
Read with three questions
- Which return-timing category was robustly associated with preschool weight?
- Why were the very-early-return estimate and overall trend uninformative?
- What makes the workplace-support interaction exploratory and in need of replication?
Keep the limits in view
Cross-sectional recall, small early-return groups and exploratory interactions do not establish causality; workplace support should not be claimed to prevent childhood obesity from this study.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Huan Liu (2026). Workplace lactation support attenuates the association between early maternal return to work and preschool overweight/obesity in China Frontiers in Public Health. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1881827
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-05. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.