Rural Men Attitude Towards Exclusive Breastfeeding in Rural Communities of Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined rural men attitude towards exclusive breastfeeding in rural communities of Rivers State, Nigeria. Questionnarire and interview schedule were used to elicit data from the respondents. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 94 men respondents. Descriptive statistical tools such as frequency majority (87.5% ) of the men knew the right definition of exclusive bresat feeding. Attitude of men towards distribution, percentage, mean, and inferential statistics such as regression were used for analysis. Result of the descriptive statistics showed that the mean age of the respondents was 40 years , 42.5% were civil servants; 76.3% of the men were married, 30.0% of the men had secondary education. The mean household size was 5 persons and the mean monthly income was N42,500. The result revealed that men had knowledge of exclusive breastfeeding and they exhibited both positive and negative attitude towards exclusive breastfeeding. The socio-economic characteristics influencing exclusive breastfeeding were occupation, marital status, education and household size. Based on the findings, it was recommended that there is an urgent need for a positive change in attitude towards exclusive breastfeeding through education about the relevance of exclusive breastfeeding so as to clear their negative attitudes.