The Role of Mothers' Socioeconomic Class on their Children's Dental Health

Objective: To assess the relationship between the mother's educational level and family income on the dental caries experience of their children. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, University of Babylon, Iraq. The sample comprised 100 children aged 515 years. Data was collected in two parts: first, a self-administered questionnaire was obtained from mothers: Mother's age, level of education, family income, child age, and gender. Another part included the clinical examination of dental caries that was measured for mothers and their children using the DMFT/dmft index for permanent and primary dentition sequentially. The collected data were statistically analyzed using mean +/- standard deviation (SD mean and standard deviation, t -test, and F-test. Results: The sample showed 60% were boys and 40% were girls, 86% with dental caries. Mothers with a high level of education and high monthly income have significantly lower dental caries experiences than their children (p<0.05). In contrast, there was a significant difference between the two age groups (p=0.000), a considerable difference between the level of family monthly income and dmft (p=0.01), and there was a correlation value between the caries index DMFT value of the children and their mother with mother's education level. Conclusion: Many dental caries were reported among Babylon City/Iraq children. Mothers with high educational levels and family monthly income were correlated to lower dental care for their children than those with low educational levels and economic status, so they need to focus on oral health knowledge and encourage prophylactic intervention and preventive measures for the population.