2021 Volume 24 Issue 3 Pages 13-22
Purpose: Health literacy-the ability to obtain, understand, evaluate, and use health and medical information to make better health decisions-has garnered attention for its role in determining a person’s health. We sought to clarify the health literacy of mothers with infants in terms of how they raise their children (“parenting literacy”).
Method: The study participants were 10 mothers with infants who were using a parenting support facility in Prefecture A, and who had been recommended to the researchers for exhibiting parenting literacy skills in raising their children. We conducted a semi-structured interview examining their parenting literacy, and performed qualitative inductive analysis on their responses.
Results: We identified the following six categories relating to parenting literacy among mothers with infants: Being receptive to parenting information; Accessing multiple sources of parenting information; Understanding parenting information; Assessing the reliability of parenting information; Assessing the importance of parenting information for oneself and one’s child; and Integrating parenting information into one’s own parenting.
Discussion: We clarified two categories, “Being receptive to parenting information” and “Assessing the importance of parenting information for oneself and one’s child,” as distinguishing factors in the nature of parenting literacy among mothers with infants, and the remaining four categories as common factors of health literacy. Our findings suggested that public health nurses need to provide support for mothers with infants not only through initiatives such as delivering early education on parenting literacy, developing parenting consultation services and providing evidence-based advice, but also by vocally encouraging mothers dealing with parenting hardships.
