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Greater Years of Maternal Schooling and Higher Scores on Academic Achievement Tests are Independently Associated with Improved Management of Child Diarrhea by Rural Guatemalan Mothers

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Abstract

Appropriate home management can alleviate many of the consequences of diarrhea including malnutrition, impaired development, growth faltering, and mortality. Maternal cognitive ability, years of schooling, and acquired academic skills are hypothesized to improve child health by improving maternal child care practices, such as illness management. Using information collected longitudinally in 1996–1999 from 466 rural Guatemalan women with children <36 months, we examined the independent associations between maternal years of schooling, academic skills, and scores on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices and an illness management index (IMI). Women scoring in the lowest and middle tertiles of academic skills scored lower on the IMI compared to women in the highest tertile (−0.24 [95% CI: −0.54, 0.07]; −0.30 [95% CI: −0.54, −0.06], respectively) independent of sociodemographic factors, schooling, and Raven’s scores. Among mothers with less than 1 year of schooling, scoring in the lowest tertile on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices compared to the highest was significantly associated with scoring one point lower on the IMI (−1.18 [95% CI: −2.20, −0.17]). Greater academic skills were independently associated with maternal care during episodes of infant diarrhea. Schooling of young girls and/or community based programs that provide women with academic skills such as literacy, numeracy and knowledge could potentially improve mothers’ care giving practices.

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Acknowledgements

This study was made possible through the long-lasting collaboration of the people from the four-village longitudinal study and researchers at INCAP. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Ann Digirolamo for assistance with psychological measures and proofreading. Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health [R01 HD043099; R01 HD29927], the WHO Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development [C6-181-449], the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [FGH-83074] and the Canada Research Chair’s program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 19 Russell Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 2S2, Canada

    Aimee L. Webb, Daniel W. Sellen & Moeza Merchant

  2. Nutrition and Health Sciences Program, Graduate Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Usha Ramakrishnan, Aryeh D. Stein & Reynaldo Martorell

  3. Hubert Department of Global Health, The Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Usha Ramakrishnan, Aryeh D. Stein, Daniel W. Sellen & Reynaldo Martorell

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  1. Aimee L. Webb
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  2. Usha Ramakrishnan
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  3. Aryeh D. Stein
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  4. Daniel W. Sellen
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  5. Moeza Merchant
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  6. Reynaldo Martorell
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Correspondence to Aimee L. Webb.

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Webb, A.L., Ramakrishnan, U., Stein, A.D. et al. Greater Years of Maternal Schooling and Higher Scores on Academic Achievement Tests are Independently Associated with Improved Management of Child Diarrhea by Rural Guatemalan Mothers. Matern Child Health J 14, 799–806 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-009-0510-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-009-0510-1

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