Knowledge of Mothers with Children Aged 0-24 Months on Child Nutrition

Adequate and balanced nutrition plays an important role in the healthy growth and development of children. The main problem related to nutrition in children derives from the fact that mothers do not have enough knowledge on nutrition. Determining the nutritional knowledge of the mothers, identifying the deficiencies and mistakes and transferring the correct one instead of them is important for raising healthy generations. The aim of this study is to determine the knowledge of mothers with children between 0-24 months old about child nutrition and to evaluate them according to various variables.The descriptive study was conducted on mothers (n:250) with children between 0-24 months old. Data were obtained via questionnaire form. The questionnaire included 20 knowledge statements on child nutrition. The data were analyzed using IBM-SPSS 20.0 for statistical program. Ages of mother’s and children’s, mothers’ employment status and educational levels, birth order of children in the family and the mother s knowledge sources were used as variables to evaluate the maternal nutritional knowledge of the mothers. For the analysis, independent sample t-test and One-way Anova were used.The average knowledge scores of the mothers was 15.4±1.5; 75.0.% of the highest possible score of 20. When knowledge scores of the mothers were analyzed by variables, a significant difference was found between their scores according to age. This difference was due to the 26-30 age group (15.7±1.2 score, p 0.05). The knowledge scores of the mothers increased as the level of education increased (p 0.01); and the knowledge scores of working mothers (16.3±1.1 score) were higher than housewives (15.3±1.5 score)(p 0.01).The results of our study reveal that in general, mothers included in the study had a good level of nutritional knowledge. On the other hand, they had some mistakes in breastfeeding and complementary feeding. It is important that mothers, who are one of the main factors in raising healthy generations, are educated by health professionals about nutrition and health, and that these pieces of training are disseminated and sustained through the government and its other stakeholders.