Predicting a Child's Oral Health Status from the Mother's Oral Health Behavior

Afra Fahira Rissetyo Utomo; Aulia Iskandarsyah; Arlette Suzy Setiawan

doi:10.1055/s-0042-1757569

Predicting a Child's Oral Health Status from the Mother's Oral Health Behavior

Eur J Dent. 2023 Oct;17(4):1137-1145. doi: 10.1055/s-0042-1757569. Epub 2022 Dec 13.

Authors

Afra Fahira Rissetyo Utomo¹, Aulia Iskandarsyah², Arlette Suzy Setiawan³

Affiliations

¹ Dental Undergraduate Study Program, Faculty of Dentistry, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia.
² Department Medical Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia.
³ Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia.

Abstract

Objective: A mother has a decisive role in maintaining children's oral health, especially before the child is of preschool age. The behavior of mother becomes a source of learning for children who can determine the child's condition, including health behavior. This study analyzes the relationship between maternal oral health behavior and children's oral health status.

Materials and methods: The research methodology used is a quantitative observational study with a cross-sectional approach to determine the oral health behavior of mothers and children's oral health status. The population of this study were mothers with their first child aged between 3 and 5 years in Tanjungsari, Tanjungsari, Sumedang, West Java, Indonesia. The sampling method and technique used nonrandom and consecutive sampling from six health center units which yielded 46 mothers. Correlation analysis was done with chi-squared validity statistical test and Spearman rank correlation.

Results: The score for the mother's oral health behavior was 75.54, while the score for the child's oral health status was 54.46. The results of the Spearman rank correlation test showed that the maternal oral health behavior score's correlation coefficient (r) was 0.198 (p-value: 0.188). The calculation of the Spearman rank correlation shows that the mother's oral health behavior affects the child's oral health status in the food and beverage consumption selection.

Conclusion: Based on all indicators of maternal oral health behavior studied, the behavior in maternal food and beverage consumption has a relationship with the child's oral health status, namely the better the behavior in the mother's food and drink consumption, the better the child's oral health status. Other indicators of oral health behavior did not show any relationship with the oral health status of children.

The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).