The Effect of Maternal Level of Mother Education on the Prevalence of Dental Caries in School Aged Children

The objective of the present study was to conduct a cross-sectional study on a sample of Iraqi children to assess the correlation between mother's level of education and dental caries. This cross-sectional study was carried out on children aged 6 to 10 years at pediatric dental clinic in College of Dentistry, University of babylon, babylon Province, Hillah city, Iraq between November 2017 and August 2018. Clinical assessment of dental caries was done according to the WHO oral health surveys-basic methods in 2013. Mother's level of education was determined through completion of a questionnaire, which included information about the child's age, gender, and mother's level of education. The level of mother education was classified into illiterate, literate (read and write), primary school, secondary school and higher school education. These were scored as 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. The achieved sample size was 60 children (mean age= 7.90 ± 1.36 years, 51.7% boys and 48.3% girls. dmfs scores were negatively correlated with age of children in which dmfs scores decrease with age. No significant difference (P.>0.05) was found between dmfs scores of boys and girls. The majority (50%) of children were from parents of middle level educational background.