Adherence to traditional postpartum practices and related factors In Gonbad Kavous City

Background and Women's behaviors during post-partum period is strongly influenced by cultural, traditional and religion background. The purpose of current study was to explore the prevalence of traditional practices and related factors of it among postnatal women in Gonbad Kavous city.
Material and In a descriptive analytic design, using randomized sampling method, 305 postnatal women attending primary health centers in rural and urban areas of Qonbad Kavous in northern Iran were involved in this study from Aug to Oct 2014. A structured questionnaire on socio-demographic and traditional practices including general, maternal, nutritional and neonatal behaviors was administrated to the sample. Yes and No answers to practice questions were summed up to calculate the total score that ranging from 0 to 39, in which the higher score showed higher traditional practices. The number of practices was grouped to high, medium and low. Data was analyzed using descriptive analysis, chi-square test and logistic regression.
Among the 305 participants, majority of them was multi parous women (62.80) with a mean age of 26.78 6.63 years. The total number of traditional practices ranged from 12 to 35 with the mean being 26.48± 4.85. In this study, 7.9%, 58.7% and 33.4% of sample practiced low, medium and high traditional practices. Women from Torkaman race and who living in extended family more practiced traditional behaviors than women who came from other race and living in nuclear family (p This study results showed the postnatal women had followed the traditional practices mostly who came from Torkaman race. This study results confirmed that special cultural, believes and traditional practices are combined with pregnancy, and childbirth.