Reflection of Maternal Feeding Patterns on Toddlers Towards Stunting in Jember Agroindustrial Community

Abstract

Impairment in the golden period of children’s growth and development, may result in unintelligent kids, short figure, physical and mental susceptability, which refer to the symptoms of stunting. Different socioeconomic factors, including parental feeding patterns, parent’s or caretaker’s knowledge, habit, etc, have been associated with this increasing malnutrition condition which also leads to the mechanisme of stunting. This research aims to discover how big the relevance of toddler mother’s parental feeding patterns (knowledge, attitude, and eating habit) is towards the stunting prevalence in Jember agroindustrial community. This research’s method uses questionnaires to ask respondents i.e mothers who have toddlers (children under five years old). Respondents were chosen through purposive sampling, namely the respondents who lived in the surrounding public health centre linked with University of Jember, which met the inclusion criteria. The data were then analized by using Spearman’s test. The research showed that the majorit y (86%) of mother’s had enough knowledge and most of them (82%) have fair attitude on maternal feeding patterns. It unfortunately also showed that knowledge and attitude on maternal feeding pattern were not related with the occurrence of stunting (p>0.05). A fair mother’s knowledge and attitude on maternal feeding pattern may not be enough to prevent the occurrence of stunting on toddlers. Another possible cause is the genetic factor may have influenced in this result. It needs intensive prevention intervention in order to suppress the occurrence of stunting. Research should be done further to see consumption pattern that can identify unmet essential nutrition and exclude the genetic factor.