The Role of Mothers' Socioeconomic Class on their Children's Dental Health

ABSTRACT Objective: To assess the relationship between the mother's educational level and family income on the dental caries experience of their children. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, University of Babylon, Iraq. The sample comprised 100 children aged 5-15 years. Data was collected in two parts: first, a self-administered questionnaire was obtained from mothers: Mother's age, level of education, family income, child age, and gender. Another part included the clinical examination of dental caries that was measured for mothers and their children using the DMFT/dmft index for permanent and primary dentition sequentially. The collected data were statistically analyzed using mean ± standard deviation (SD mean and standard deviation, t-test, and F-test. Results: The sample showed 60% were boys and 40% were girls, 86% with dental caries. Mothers with a high level of education and high monthly income have significantly lower dental caries experiences than their children (p