Maternal Employment and Nutritional Status of Preschool Children

Abstract

The early childhood development is the most crucial and the mother’s care and attention is essential. The inevitable changes like women entering the workplace have an effect on child growth and development. The purpose of the study was to compare the nutritional status of preschool children between employed and unemployed mothers. The study was conducted in the urban community of Rajshahi city from January to December, 2018. The comparative cross sectional study was conducted among 400 children aged fewer than five years with their respondents. Respondents were selected by a purposive sampling method and data were collected by semi-structured questionnaire by face to face interview. Nutritional status was assessed by anthropometric measurements. The mean age of the employed and unemployed mothers were 30.79±2.99 and 30.58±2.89 years respectively. Most of the employed mothers (91.0%) practiced exclusive breast-feeding for 6 months. Among the unemployed mothers, 64.0% practiced, which was a high statistical difference (p<0.05). There was highly significant statistical difference among mothers of two groups regarding starting complementary feeding as p=0.004. There was no significant 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). The study showed that maternal employed status play an essential role in determining child health care practice, which may influence a child’s health and development in later life.