However, mothers aged 31 year and above and those with
one or more children showed significantly more overall readiness
and were twice as aware and ready to initiate preventive
oral health care for their children than mothers aged 30 years
and below and those with no children
This could be logically
explained based on the fact that older mothers and those with
one or more children probably had more oral hygiene-related
care experience and could have been already practicing preventive
care for their children. In addition, older mothers would
naturally be more mature than first time mothers (who mostly
would be younger).
This finding concurs with a previous study
in which younger mothers and mothers of one or two children
knew less about the prevention of oral disease than older
mothers and those with three or more children.20 Despite there
are no comparison data in the literature review for the neighboring
countries, we anticipate similar limited oral health
knowledge and readiness on the basis of that oral health education
programs are deficient in most of the developing countries