Influence of socio-demographic determinants of mothers on birth weight of newborns

Pages: 2116-2121
Suravi Sahu and Chandrashree Lenka (P.G. Department of Home Science, Sambalpur University, Jyotivihar, Burla, Odisha)

Intrauterine growth and development is one of the most important process in human life cycle and it is closely associated with birth weight of the newborns. It is also an important predictor of children’s future health and later life survival. Life begins in the mother’s womb and factors associated with maternal health has a great impact on newborns birth weight .Further maternal health status depend on their socio economic condition, nutritional status and their dietary intake. This is a vicious cycle. The aim of present research is to study the influence of the socio-demographic determinants of mothers on birth weight of newborns in rural areas. For the present study Lakhanpur and Jharsuguda Block of Jharsuguda district of Odisha was selected as study area and purposive sampling method was followed . 300 women in third trimester of pregnancy till their delivery were selected from the total population. The findings of the present study indicated that several maternal parameters such as caste, education, monthly income of the family, socio economic class of the mothers were significantly related to risk of delivery and low birth weight of the baby. Even though various steps has been taken by the government and different voluntary organization to tackle the problem of low birth weight of newborns, still the problem is staggering the situation over all the country. Thus educating mothers for changing their behavioral pattern and proper use of health care services along with emphasis on maternal nutrition and health care may be the right solution to reduce the number of low birth weight babies.