Gender Differences in Feeding, Care, Support and Nutritional Status of Children in the Rural Area of Kaski District, Nepal.

The girl child faces the neglect of the family in the form of a failure to provide her the basic necessities of life in terms of food, clothing, love, shelter, supervision, education and medical care. Differential treatment of the boys and girls within families can be attributed to the social religious, cultural and economic returns that sons provide to their parents relative to daughters. Objective of the study was to assess the gender differences in feeding, care, support and nutritional status of children in the rural area of Kaski district, Nepal. A cross sectional study was carried out among the 456 children of 0-23 months from four VDCs of Kaski district. Data were collected using cluster random sampling. After obtaining the oral consent from the mothers and then data were collected in a pre-tested, pre designed, structured questionnaire by interview technique. In this study half of the respondents initiated breast milk within one hour after birth. Among them, more male children were received breast milk than female children. Nearly all (98.7%) of female child were fed colostrums milk. More than half (53.6%) of the respondents (male 54.4% and female 52.9%) were feeding breast milk more than nine times in 24 hours. Higher proportions of male children were exclusively breastfed than female children. Similarly higher percentages of male children were fed complementary food on timely than female children. The frequency of complementary feeding was less than four times for both children. During child illness most of the respondents went to hospital and almost all children got vaccines and vitamin A. Female appeared slightly more likely to be stunted than male. 19.2% male and 13.1% female were underweight and the proportion of wasted were nearly same in both male and female. There were no much differences among both the gender regarding feeding practice, care and support. Keywords: Gender differences in feeding; Care; Nutritional status of children; Rural area