Trends in Parents' Dental Attitudes to their Children's Oral Health

Objectives: Many immigrant preschool children have a different caries burden compared to western native children. The study aimed to explore parental dental attitudes differences in 2 years time in a cohort of children which were 3 year old at baseline. Methods: Data based on parental questionnaires were collected from children participating in a follow-up study from age 3 yr (n=354) in 2002 to 5 (n=304) in 2004. Children were categorized as western native (WN) and immigrants (IM). The items were included because they significantly related to caries experience in a multicentre study {Pine, 2004}. The responses were weighted positive if they would promote good dental health and vice versa. Composite attitudinal variables relating to hygiene, diet and indulgence were calculated as a summation of the weighted responses to selected items. Results: Parental dental attitudes are significantly less negative among WN-children at 5 yr compared to when they were 3-yr-old (p<0.0001). The parental dental attitudes in 5-yr-olds were also significantly differently distributed (p<0.0001) within the IM-and WN-groups and showed more unfavourable parental attitudes in the IM-group, except regarding “Attitude to Diet.” Among 3-yr-olds these parental attitudes differed significantly in respect to “Parental Indulgence” (p<0.0001). The trend of parental dental attitudes from 3 yr to 5 yr was negative among the IM-children, where the proportion with negative parental attitudes, especially regarding “Parental Indulgence” at 5 yr, was high. Parental attitude variables in the IM-group did not show statistically significant differences from 3 to 5 yr. Conclusion: Parental dental attitudes among western children improve from 3 year to 5 year of age. This was not evident for the immigrant children, which might indicate need for culturally tailored efforts to promote oral health behaviour change in this group.