[Immigration, breastfeeding and smoking habit]

The advantages of breastfeeding for child and mother are widely recognised. Many factors seem to influence the mother's decision of breastfeed. The immigrant state of parents is one of the relevant factors considered. Previous studies founded higher breastfeeding rates among the immigrant population. The present work studies the rates of starting and duration of breastfeeding in the Spanish native population and in immigrants, as well as its relationship with other factors, such as tobacco habit and other perinatal factors.

The study included 911 children over a 10 months period. Age, sex, pregnancy duration, birth weight, parents' age, parent's smoking habits and smoking during pregnancy and their relationship the starting and duration of breastfeeding (OR and 95 % CI was obtained) in both immigrant and native population groups and a final multivariate analysis was performed for the starting of breastfeeding and continuing it at three months, including all studied variables.

Immigrant and Native population were similar in all variables apart from mother age and smoking habit. Only mother smoking status (initial: OR 0.610 [ 0.429-0.867]; three months: OR 0.540 [0.458-0.636]) and birth weight (initial: OR 0.411 [0.268-0.629]; three months: OR 0.525 [0.407-0.677]) reached statistical significance in the final multivariate analysis.

Our findings show that smoking habit and low birth weight are risk factors for not breastfeeding. Immigration status seems to be a confounding factor.