Assessing parents’ awareness about children’s “first thousand days of life”: a descriptive and analytical study

Abstract

Background Many adulthood illnesses are rooted in childhood, especially in the “first thousand days of life”. Despite parents’ role in children’s development, no study has examined parental awareness concerning this period. This study aimed to examine the awareness of parents concerning the “first thousand days of life” and the relationship between parents’ demographics and their awareness. Methods This study was conducted on 135 parents in Kerman, Iran, using a valid and reliable questionnaire developed by researchers based on the opinion of experts and relevant references. The relationship between participants’ demographics and their awareness was examined by multiple regression. The relationship between homogeneity of couples’ education degree and awareness was analyzed using ANOVA. Chi-square was used to examine the relationship between information sources and parents’ familiarity and to compare parents’ preferred sources. Results The average parental awareness was 41.96 ± 11.90. Eighty-three percent of the parents have not heard about the “first thousand days of life”. The source of information for 57% of the parents was friends and relatives (p < 0.0001). Overall, 87% of the parents desired to know about this period, and 47% liked using mobile applications for information (p < 0.0001). Conclusions Parents’ awareness about the “first thousand days of life” is lower than the average. Since the source of information concerning this period for most parents is friends and relatives and most parents are very interested in obtaining information, it is recommended that policy-makers use the capacity of other sources to increase parents’ awareness. Given the greater tendency of parents to obtain information through mobile applications, we suggest investing more in this source.

Understanding the importance of the early-life period for adult health: a systematic review

“…27 The seventh quantitative study utilised multiple-choice questions, scoring participants for "correct" or "incorrect" answers. 28 The three qualitative studies included for review explored participants' understanding of the importance of the early-life period via interviews and discussions. While the participant groups in these studies were significantly different demographically (Canadian specialist healthcare professionals versus mothers and grandmothers raising children in poverty in South Africa), researchers in both contexts highlighted the immediate demands of competing priorities and caregivers' difficulty conceptualising long-term risk as major barriers to communicating DOHaD knowledge.…”

“…29,34 While the articles in this review did span a range of populations such as adolescents, tertiary students and health professionals in addition to parents, it is telling that all of those studies assessing parental awareness of DOHaD were heavily biased towards mothers with very limited participation from fathers. 24,27,28,30,31 This appears primarily due to selected avenues of recruitment being focused towards antenatal and maternal healthcare clinics and is problematic in that it reflects a disproportionate focus on the role of the individual woman as the provider of a nurturing early-life environment, at the exclusion of myriad other influences outside her ability to control. [35][36][37] Attributing primary responsibility for the lifelong health of a child to its mother only serves to add an additional burden of stress to the early-life environment, paradoxically introducing another potential risk factor for later disease.…”

“…The answers to these questions were assessed as being correct or incorrect against a pre-determined answer sheet and the scores were then combined prior to analysis as a measure of "parents' awareness about the first 1000 days of life"therefore making it impossible to separate participants' understanding of DOHaD concepts (the WHY) from their knowledge of best practice approaches to mitigate risk (the WHAT). 28 Participant scores for similarly-themed questions were also combined by McKerracher et al, however in this case DOHaD knowledge was grouped separately from dietary guideline knowledge, allowing these researchers to conclude that participants with a better understanding of the WHY were more likely to do the WHAT. 24 Of the 10 studies, only two queried participants' sources of DOHaD knowledge, with Bagheri et al reporting that almost 60% of the participants who were familiar with the phrase "first thousand days of life" (n = 23) had heard it from friends and relatives, while their counterparts surveyed by Lynch et al (n = 121) either could not remember where they had heard the phrase (31.4%) or attributed their awareness to the internet (27.3%) or a health professional (25.6%) being the source of their information.…”

“…24 Of the 10 studies, only two queried participants' sources of DOHaD knowledge, with Bagheri et al reporting that almost 60% of the participants who were familiar with the phrase "first thousand days of life" (n = 23) had heard it from friends and relatives, while their counterparts surveyed by Lynch et al (n = 121) either could not remember where they had heard the phrase (31.4%) or attributed their awareness to the internet (27.3%) or a health professional (25.6%) being the source of their information. 23,28 A focus on the short term versus the long term…”

This Is My Baby Interview: An Adaptation to the Spanish Language and Culture

“…Although parents of children with Down syndrome directly influence the development of the latter [ 1 , 4 ], it is known that the emotional state of the parents is a dynamic process that changes over time [ 12 , 14 ]. The awareness of the influence of parents of typically developing children is high in relation to their role in their children’s development [ 18 ]; however, there are no studies that describe the awareness of the influence of parents with children with Down syndrome. When analyzing the emotional state of parents with babies with Down syndrome, variables such as depression [ 10 , 19 ], anxiety [ 20 , 21 ] and resilience [ 3 , 12 ] are taken into account, whereas other variables are disregarded, such as acceptance, commitment and awareness of influence.…”