Characteristics of young foster children in the urban slums of Bangladesh

Aim: To identify the reasons for the fostering of children, and to describe their feeding practices and assess their health and nutritional status. Methods: Forty‐six pairs of mothers and their young foster children (up to 24 mo of age) were interviewed in a cross‐sectional study in the urban slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Another 82 pairs of mothers and their biological children of a similar age group were interviewed for comparison. Results: Sixty‐five percent of the children were fostered because of the death of their biological mothers. Eighty‐three percent of the biological mothers died because of complications during delivery or the immediate postpartum period and the remainder died after the postpartum period of diseases unrelated to their pregnancies. More than half (52%) of the foster mothers were childless and a quarter (24%) fostered children for reasons of gender preference. Almost a quarter (24%) of the children were placed in foster homes because of extreme parental poverty. Divorce or separation of the biological parents accounted for only 7% of children fostered. Approximately 90% of the foster children were given animal and/or formula milk in their first month of life while all children in the comparison group were given breast milk. Among the foster children, 58% were given semisolid or solid food before completion of 4 mo compared with 14% in the comparison group. Significantly more children in the foster group suffered from diarrhoea and acute respiratory infection than in the comparison group. Conclusion: Maternal death, poverty and childlessness and child gender preference of foster mothers were important factors in fostering of children in the study group. Inappropriate feeding practices compounded by diseases may have contributed to the poor nutritional status of the foster children.