A study of mothers’ knowledge and practices on children’s feeding and nutrition in the early years

Abstract

Nutrition plays a major role is a person’s life and it is the essential element for overall growth and development, beginning at conception and continuing throughout life. It has a significant impact on a child’s development. Lack of nutrients in any stage of a child’s life can hamper their proper physical and mental development. Like some other developing countries, in Bangladesh, child malnutrition is still a serious public health problem. It is one of the major risk factors for mortality among young children. Starting from birth onwards, children are extremely sensitive to what and how they are fed. Thus, this study aimed to explore the feeding knowledge and practices of children’s mothers who are the prime caregivers of children. Here, mothers from different educational backgrounds with similar socioeconomic status were studied and their knowledge and practices towards early childhood nutrition in the context of the urban area of Dhaka city were explored. The study is a descriptive quantitative study conducted on 45 mothers who were selected via a purposive sampling technique. Data for this study was collected through a web survey. The study followed two main research questions, which are, mothers’ feeding knowledge of nutrition for children aged 3 to 5 years and the feeding practices (nutritional support), that are provided by the mothers. The study found the differences in understanding, nutritional knowledge, behaviors & practices on child’s nutrition of 3 to 5 years aged children. The study also significantly highlighted that for working mothers, child feeding decisions and practices are influenced by their time and work pressures. The study also found a significant number of mothers, despite having an understanding of nutrition and how childhood malnutrition could be prevented in terms of their feeding practice, sadly do not practice their nutritional knowledge.