Exploring the Link Between Maternal Oral Health Literacy and Child Oral Health Behaviours

Introduction and Aims

Caregiver's oral health literacy (OHL) has a multidimensional impact on child oral health outcomes. In infants and toddlers, oral health behaviours (OHB) play a crucial role in the development of early childhood caries and could be related to the caregiver's OHL. A simple OHL assessment may help identify children at risk of caries. This study aimed to investigate the association between maternal OHL and the child OHBs during the first 2 years of life.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was conducted with 398 mothers of children aged 6 to 24 months. Maternal OHL was assessed using the ThREALD-30. Maternal demographics, oral health knowledge, and child OHBs were collected through self-administered questionnaires. ThREALD-30 scores were compared using the Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests. Spearman's rank correlation and gamma generalized linear models were used to identify factors associated with OHL. Binary logistic regression examined the association between maternal OHL and child OHBs. The Receiver Operating Characteristics curve determined a cut-off OHL score for severely deleterious child OHBs, and Chi-square analyses assessed the association with the cut-off.

Results

The mean maternal ThREALD-30 was 23.7 (SD = 5.0), showing a strong positive correlation with oral health knowledge (r = 0.81, P < .001) and associations with low education and family income (P < .001). Logistic regression showed that lower ThREALD-30 levels were associated with poor child OHBs, including nighttime feeding, sugary bottle feeding, and no oral cleaning (P < .05). ThREALD-30 score ≤21 related to severely deleterious child OHBs.

Conclusion

Lower maternal OHL was strongly associated with poor child OHBs, with a ThREALD-30 score ≤21 indicating a high risk of caries.

Clinical Relevance

ThREALD-30 may be a useful screening tool for assessing mothers with young children at risk of early childhood caries.