The Effect Of Maternal Work On The Nutritional Status Of Mothers And Children

Maternal work has been seen to have two contradictory effect onrnchild nutrition-via increasing income and decreasing timernavailable in the household . The net effect will depend on therndecision making pattern of the household and the adequacy andrnquality of child care substitute . A sample of 422 mothers andrntheir children were selected In the rural town of Butajirarnthrough household survey to exami ne the effect of working forrnprofit/gain on nutritional status of both the mother andrnchildren. Result showed that children of working mothers had arnbetter nutritional status [OR(95%CI) 0 . 38 (0 . 19,0.76] howeverrnworking mothers themselves were at a risk of being malnourishedrncompared to non-working mothers (95%CI): 1. 62 (1. 05, 2 . 5). Therndecision making pattern and the child care substitute did notrnshow any effect on the overall result . In the attempt to improvernthe nutri tional status of children the encouragement ofrnmaternal involvement in income generating activities isrnindispensable. Working mothers in the informal work needs to bernconsidered in any nutritional intervention programme as they arernlikely to be at risk of being malnourished .rnv

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