IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v36y1993i7p937-947.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Child feeding practices in a rural area of Zimbabwe

Author

Listed:
  • Cosminsky, Sheila
  • Mhloyi, Marvellous
  • Ewbank, Douglas

Abstract

This paper reports preliminary results from a study of child feeding practices in a rural area of Zimbabwe. Although Zimbabwe has relatively low infant mortality rates, it still has high child malnutrition rates. Several factors, including sex roles and relations between the sexes, access to resources, food costs and availability, time and energy costs of food production and preparation, and illness beliefs and practices, especially those concerning diarrhea and malnutrition, are examined as possible determinants of feeding practices and nutritional and health status. Results are compared to reports made by the World Bank and the Zimbabwe national nutrition survey. Whereas the World Bank report suggests a problem of late introduction of breastmilk supplements or solids, we found the opposite tendency of early introduction (by 3 months) of supplements. We suggest that mothers' pragmatic attitudes, interacting with certain social, cultural, and economic variables, are important factors influencing their child feeding decisions, especially resisting the use of commercial infant formula, at least in this rural area, and promoting prolonged breastfeeding.

Suggested Citation

  • Cosminsky, Sheila & Mhloyi, Marvellous & Ewbank, Douglas, 1993. "Child feeding practices in a rural area of Zimbabwe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 937-947, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:36:y:1993:i:7:p:937-947
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(93)90085-I
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Colvin, Christopher J. & Smith, Helen J. & Swartz, Alison & Ahs, Jill W. & de Heer, Jodie & Opiyo, Newton & Kim, Julia C. & Marraccini, Toni & George, Asha, 2013. "Understanding careseeking for child illness in sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review and conceptual framework based on qualitative research of household recognition and response to child diarrhoea, ," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 66-78.
    2. Engle, Patrice L. & Menon, Purnima & Haddad, Lawrence, 1999. "Care and Nutrition: Concepts and Measurement," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(8), pages 1309-1337, August.
    3. Fouts, Hillary N. & Brookshire, Robyn A., 2009. "Who feeds children? A child's-eye-view of caregiver feeding patterns among the Aka foragers in Congo," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 285-292, July.
    4. Veile, Amanda & Martin, Melanie & McAllister, Lisa & Gurven, Michael, 2014. "Modernization is associated with intensive breastfeeding patterns in the Bolivian Amazon," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 148-158.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:36:y:1993:i:7:p:937-947. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.