Relations of maternal health literacy and parenting practices with early childhood development: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to examine the relations of early childhood development with maternal health literacy and mothers’ early parenting practices. This cross-sectional study was conducted on mothers with children aged 36–59 months (n = 503) with a survey form, Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI) and Turkish Health Literacy Scale-32. Children of mothers with sufficient/excellent health literacy levels, children who are breastfed for 12 months and longer, and children with a screen time of 2 h or less were more likely to be ECDI-on-track (AOR (CI) = 2.52 (1.53–4.15); 2.28 (1.41–3.70); 2.04 (1.18–3.50); respectively). In conclusion, children whose mothers were adequately health literate, who were breastfed longer and who had less screen time were better on ECDI indicators. Increasing the knowledge and skills of mothers on early parenting practices and supporting them to be good health literacy will contribute positively to the early development of children.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood development
• maternal health literacy
• parenting practices

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the participants in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

AO conceptualized and designed the study, developed the data extraction instrument, collected data and carried out the initial analysis, drafted and revised the manuscript. SSY conceptualized and designed the study, developed the data extraction instrument, carried out the initial analysis, drafted and revised the manuscript, completed quality control, conceptualized the study, supervised data collection, and critically screened important intellectual contents of the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the manuscript as submitted and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Written informed consent was provided by each participant. Permission to carry out the study was approved by local ethics committee of Afyonkarahisar Health Sciences University (Project no: 2011-KAEK-2). All study procedures were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.