Mother Education, Maternal Nutritional Knowledge and Feeding Practices

Nutritional status of children is greatly depended on nutritional knowledge and feeding practices of the mother which vary substantially between population due to socio-demographic, economic and cultural variations. Childhood malnutrition is a major health problem in Bangladesh, but the relationship between maternal knowledge and practices with the nutritional status of children have not been adequately studied in Bangladeshi population. This relationship along with factors affecting the maternal knowledge and practices, have been addressed in this work including 400 mothers of >2years children. This study has also identified misconception regarding mothers' nutritional knowledge and underlying reasons of improper child feeding practices. The work emphasizes on the importance of providing nutritional knowledge to the mothers (irrespective of educational status) and it also highlights the need for policy and strategy adaptation to provide more effective behavior change education targeted particularly to the people with lower education levels.