Involvement of Pastors’ Wives in Educating Nursing Mothers on Childcare Practices in Ibadan North Local Government Area, Nigeria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4314/Keywords:
Child health care practices, Pastors’ wife involvement, Faith-based approach, Nursing mothersAbstract
Poor childcare practices among nursing mothers have been implicated as one of the factors influencing high child morbidity and
mortality in many developing countries including Nigeria. Many health promotion and education approaches have been used in
previous studies to improve childcare practices but very few have considered the inherent potentials of using faith-based strategy
as one of the acceptable means of health promotion in many developing countries. This descriptive cross-sectional study was
aimed at investigating the involvement of Pastors’ wives as change agents in educating nursing mothers on childcare practices
in Ibadan North Local Government Area. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select pastors’ wives from all the registered
churches in the Local Government Area. A pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Data
were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. One hundred and twenty-eight (N=128) pastors’ wives with age of
46.1±9.3 years were interviewed. Overall, 9.4% had never taught or preached on childcare practices or other health-related
matters to mothers/women in the church before. Analysis showed that 42.2%, 26.6% and 31.3% of Pastor’s wives had good, fair
and poor level of basic communication techniques, respectively. Age and educational status of Pastors’ wives significantly affect
the level of communication between Pastors’ wives and mothers in the church (p<0.05). Involvement of Pastors’ wives with the
mothers on childcare practices was through counselling (90.6%), teaching (53.1%), preaching (29.7%) and phone calls (18.8%).
Counselling was the most preferred method (68.0%) of communication. This study establishes the fact that Pastors’ wives and
nursing mothers have been communicating health matters through counselling, which can be used as an opportunity for
improving child care through faith-based setting.
