Tackling Toddler Malnutrition: Exploring Maternal Influences on Wasting

Abstract

Wasting is a state of malnutrition in toddlers, where Weight-for-Height is between -3 and less than -2 standard deviations for children aged 0-59 months. Wasting has been prioritized in the health development plan for RPJMN 2020-2024. The aim of this research is to identify maternal determinant factors causing wasting incidents. The research design is a case-control study. This research is a narrative literature review, A literature search was carried out, using PubMed and the Google database, to identify articles, published during a period of 12 years (2011-2023). The key-words used for searching these articles were wasting, malnutrition, and under 5 children. The research has involved an assessment of 34 studies obtained from PubMed and Google's database regarding maternal factors causing occurrences of wasting in toddlers. Based on the conducted assessment, maternal factors causing wasting in toddlers include education, knowledge, occupation, parenting style, BMI, age, and birth spacing. The government needs to focus on enhancing nutritional knowledge among mothers of toddlers and implement programs aimed at improving parenting styles for these mothers. Keywords: Wasting, Maternal Factors, Knowledge, Age, Parenting Style