Vietnamese attitudes towards maternal and infant health

Behavioural and dietary precautions, observed both by ethnic Vietnamese and by Vietnamese-Chinese women during pregnancy and the puerperium, derive from the humoral medical classification of foodstuffs and physiological states. Migration to Australia has led only to minor modification of the birth prescriptions, which provide women with a means of dealing with the physiological-medical and psychological-personal changes brought about by pregnancy and delivery. However, traditional practices of infant feeding have largely been abandoned in favour of a short period either of breast feeding only or of exclusive bottle feeding and the early introduction of solids.