Assessment of mother's attitude toward exclusive breast feeding, Sari, 1386

The best and preferred type of nutrition for babies has been proud to be breast feeding. In spite of the critical importance of breastfeeding and many national programs performed in this field, some studies conducted in recent years have indicated the mother's dysfunction. Based on the fact that this is suggestive of mother's attitude, we evaluated the mother's knowledge and attitude towards exclusive breast feeding in Sari in 1386.

This was a descriptive cross sectional study and the subjects were nursing mothers in Sari. The sampling method chosen was simple randomized and the data were collected, using a questionnaire including three parts: demographic data, and questions about the mother's knowledge and attitude toward breast feeding. Data analysis was done using SPSS13 and chi-square r statistical tests.

Totally, 410 mothers entered this study, with an age range 25.92± 4.90. Most of them (74.3%) were in low socioeconomic status. More than half of them were uneducated. 52.9 % of them had their prenatal care under observation of a gynecologist. 36.7% of them had desirable knowledge about breastfeeding while 57.3% had a medium and 6.3% had a low level knowledge about it. 7.1% of the mothers had relatively negative attitude, 68.6% relatively positive attitude and 24.3% had absolute positive attitude regarding exclusive breast-feeding.

According to the results, the Mother's knowledge and attitude towards breast feeding was undesirable (in medium level). Therefor, there is an urgent need to educate mothers about breastfeeding.