Maternal Employment and Nutritional Status of Preschool Children

[摘要] Background: The early childhood development is most crucial and the mother’s care andattention is essential. The purpose of the study was to compare the nutritional status of preschoolchildren between employed and unemployed mothers.Subjects and Method: The comparative cross-sectional study was conducted among 400children aged fewer than five years with their respondents. The study was conducted in the urbancommunity of Rajshahi city from January, 2018 to December, 2018. The dependent variableswere nutritional status of preschool children. The independent variables were socio-demographiccharacteristics and maternal employment. Respondents were selected by a purposive samplingmethod and data were collected by semi-structured questionnaire by face-to-face interview.Nutritional status was determined by anthropometric measurements. The statistical analysis wasconducted using SPSS version 21. The findings of the study were presented by frequency,percentage, Mean, SD and Chi square test.Results: The mean ages of the employed and unemployed mothers were Mean= 30.79; SD=2.99and Mean= 30.58; SD= 2.89 years respectively. Most of the employed mothers (91.0%) practicedexclusive breast-feeding for 6 months. Among the unemployed mothers, 64.0% practiced, whichwas a high statistical difference (p <0.001). There was highly significant statistical differenceamong mothers of two groups regarding starting complementary feeding as p=0.004. There was nosignificant statistical difference regarding children’s mid upper arm circumference (MUAC)classification. Weight for age (WAZ) - score, height for age (HAZ)-score and weight for height(WHZ)-score of employed and unemployed mother’s children showed a significant difference(p<0.05).Conclusion: Maternal employed status plays an essential role in determining child health carepractice, which may influence a child’s health and development in later life.

[学科分类] 食品科学和技术

[关键词] childhood nutrition;maternal employment;stunting;underweight;wasting