Abstract

This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out to examine the impacts of child care practices on the nutritional status of infants of working mothers attending day care centres in Irewole local government area, Oshun state, Nigeria. Out of the wards in the purposively selected local government area, 8 were randomly selected and a comprehensive list of the registered day care centres in those wards was obtained from the local government secretariat in Ikire. Data collection was done using anthropometric measurements of the infants, and a self- developed pretested questionnaire administered on the infants’ parents and care providers by trained research assistants. The questionnaires were then sorted, cleaned and coded before entry into the computer. Data analysis was carried out using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 12.0. Majority of the care providers were females (91.3%) and married (84.4%). Most of them (72.9%) were aged between 18 and 38 years and 83.7% have had over 10 years working experience in infant care. Among the care providers 58.9% were College of Education graduates, 33.5% were holders of Senior Secondary School certificate while a small proportion (7.6%), had no formal education. About 42.5% of them specialised in education of young children. Most of the parents, 87.7%, were university graduates, 97.8% of them were married, 1.5% divorced and 0.7% were separated. Also, 46.23% of these parents were bankers, 10.67% were high cadre civil servants/university lecturers and 4.7% were secondary school teachers. Most of the care providers (87.5%) and (62.6%) have had training before and while working in the day care centres respectively. The weight and height (length) of the infants ranged from 4.0- 15.0 kg and 50-100 cm respectively, while majority of them (58.6%) were females. Nutritional status assessment revealed that none of the male infants was wasted, 4.5% of the female ones were wasted; 3.2% of male and 5.2% female infants were stunted. Also, 0.4% males and 2.7% females were underweight. Environmental characteristics and sanitation of the day care centres revealed that majority of them used water closet system (72.5%) and refuse disposal was mostly by either city service or open dumps (61.3%). Primary water source was deep well (83.8%) while 16.2% obtained water from bore holes. Results indicated that most of the children studied were well nourished.