Abstract

Objective: Many studies have shown a positive relationship between parenting knowledge and early childhood development. We aimed to assess parenting knowledge about early childhood development and child-rearing in a sample of Turkish mothers and fathers.

Methods: A total of 106 married Turkish couples with children under the age of three participated in our study. Mothers and fathers completed 45 questions of the Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory (KIDI) and a sociodemographic questionnaire, individually. The KIDI is widely used in the international literature on child development and parenting knowledge. Permission to use the inventory was obtained from its author.

Results: The median KIDI questionnaire scores were 8 (min-max: (-10)- 20) for mothers and 6 (min-max: (-14)- 20) for fathers (maximum score 30). The average knowledge score obtained by mothers was significantly higher than the average score obtained by fathers (p=0.024). Maternal education is associated with parenting knowledge (p<0.001). Mothers had the most experience in changing diapers and dressing their children, while fathers had the most experience in playing with their children. The least experience for mothers and fathers was reading books with their children. It was found that mothers learned the information about their children mostly by talking to their families and fathers learned mostly by talking to their wives.

Conclusion: The results of the study show that Turkish couples’ parenting knowledge, especially in child development, is an area that needs to be reinforced. Education level played an important role in parenting. Policies to improve parental education may also include increasing parental knowledge of child development.

Keywords: Child development, early childhood, knowledge of infant development inventory, parental knowledge, parenting

Copyright and license

Copyright © 2023 The author(s). This is an open-access article published by Aydın Pediatric Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

1.
Güven Baysal Ş, Gümüş Doğan D, Kortay S, Arslan FN, Demirkıran Öztürk Y, Yağın FH. Parenting knowledge of child development in Turkish mothers and fathers. Trends in Pediatrics. 2023;4(2):109-119. https://doi.org/10.59213/TP.2023.51523

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