Maternal Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Relative to the Use of Pacifiers

Objective: To evaluate the maternal knowledge, attitudes and practices relative to the use of pacifiers in children aged 0 to 48 months, in the city of Paracambi, RJ, Brazil. Method: The sample comprised 120 mothers, which corresponds to 10% of the target population registered at the Basic Health Units (BHU) of the city. A single researcher applied to the mothers a semistructured questionnaire with 10 questions referring to the offering of pacifiers, parental knowledge of pacifiers and children’s psychosocial profile. Results: As regards feeding, no correlation was found between the feeding modality and the parental schooling. Nevertheless, 45.8% used breast feeding complemented with bottle feeding, 33.6% used only breast feeding and 21.5% used only bottle feeding. It was observed that 84.2% of the children used pacifiers, although 37.5% of the parents believed that pacifiers should not be offered to the children and 65% of them had been offered their first pacifies by their own mothers. Most children (61.6%) started using pacifiers as newborns, 19.2% before the 1st year of life and 5% between the 2nd and 4th year of life. Most interviewees (69.2%) had already received some kind of professional guidance on the use of pacifiers and the physician (47.0%) was the most frequently cited professional that gave instructions followed by the dentist (38.6%). The other 14.4% of the subjects got information from newspapers and magazines. Conclusion: The pacifier is commonly offered to young children by parents and caregivers and its use is influenced by a strong cultural nature.