Sex-Preference and Protein Calorie Malnutrition

Abstract

300 mothers of children under 2 years in Ludhiana city India were interviewed to determine the sex preference pattern among mothers to investigate the child feeding habits by sex preference and attitudinal status of the mothers and to determine the impact of sex bias on the incidence of protein malnutrition among children. Mothers were selected by the stratified random sampling method. Both primary and secondary sources of data collection were used. An interview schedule was the primary source of data collection. An index of the mothers attitudes was prepared on the basis of their responses to 10 basic questions aimed at eliciting their opinion behavior and practices towards child feeding. Using this index all the respondents were differentiated into 2 categories -- traditional (165) and modern (135). The traditional mothers answered less than 5 questions correctly; those who gave 5 or more correct answers were classified as modern mothers. As many as 92.8% of the respondents with traditional attitudes and 80.8% of those with modern attitudes preferred a male child. The corresponding preferences for a female child were 1.8% and 4.4%. A similar differentiation in preference to any sex of the child was noticed among the traditional respondents (5.4%) and modern respondents (14.8%) indicating that the ratio of boys to girls that the parents regard as ideal is heavily tilted in favor of boys (30:1). Those with traditional attitudes were more likely to be reluctant about adopting newer scientific food habits. There was a strong tendency to give vegetarian food to the female children and nonvegetarian food to the male children among both attitude types although this tendency was more marked in the case of mothers with traditional attitudes. The incidence of protein-calorie malnutrition was almost the same among both the male and female children of mothers with modern attitudes. Among the children belonging to mothers with traditional attitudes 43.8% of the children were suffering from protein-calorie malnutrition as compared to their male counterparts (26.1%). The study results strongly favor the hypothesis i.e. the more traditional the mothers attitude the greater are the chances of malnutrition among female children.