There are so many things that don't help mothers continue breastfeeding. I think as a whole it is societies perception of breastfeeding that is a mothers biggest barrier. Breastfeeding while natural is not seen as normal. Mothers today rarely handle a baby before birth and most have never seen a baby being breastfed. We lack the family support networks we had decades ago. Back before formula was marketed mothers had friends and family who came around and did stuff and helped the mother so all she had to do was learn to breastfeed. The mother had on a hand a wealth of knowledge to help the mother through any problems. This is where I feel ABA fits in. Mothers are able to access groups while pregnant and observe mothers breastfeeding, once baby is born they have other mothers who can sympathise and offer advice and trained counsellors who can help out. But the ABA can't help if the mothers don't know about them and this is hard when the they receive limited funding.
Health professionals not having up to date information is a big problem. Most of them have only done a few hours of breastfeeding learning while in medical school so their knowledge is made up of past experiences with patients, our themselves/or wives and most terribly from formula companies whose only interest is getting the sales.
If you read through any of the submissions already made to the parlimentry enquiry you will see that between the mothers and the professionals that have submitted the answers are relatively the same. Lack of support, lack of education from others (lets face it most pregnant women are bombarded with BF info) and also mothers not being correctly informed of the health issues that can occur from formula.
I think also a big thing that affects BF is peoples perception of formula. I know there are women that cannot physically or even from pyscological reasons cannot breastfeed, however there are many women who choose before birth or after a few weeks to feed formula. Quite often these mothers are under the false impression that formula is the same or better then breastmilk, and a lot of time this is told to them by health professionals. Formula is too readily available for mothers in those difficult times. And despite saying on the tin to consult a HP before using many women just buy it form the grocery store without even talking it over with anyone.
There is now 300 submissions on the website and some really good suggestions (many that have been made on here) on what the government can do. Lets hope they do it ASAP. It is estimated that the cost of premature weaning of infants at 3 mths costs the government $290 million per year (source the NHMRC) imagine what could be done with that money.