Understanding Barriers to Complementary Feeding Practices in Rural Areas
Background: Complementary feeding (CF) is one of the important factors in stunting prevention efforts.
Objectives: This study aims to understand the obstacles in the practice of complementary feeding.
Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive qualitative research is used to explore the phenomenon of obstacles experienced in depth. A total of 5 main informants are mothers who have children aged 6-23 months who are stunted and 5 triangulation informants consisting of husbands, grandmothers, and community health workers
Results: This study provides an overview of specific barriers to the practice of CF, such as the child's response such as picky eating, the onset of allergic reactions, and the risk of choking. The practical obstacles experienced are pressure from family and the environment to give CF prematurely, limited time to prepare CF and financial limitations to access healthier food. Obstacles that come from mothers such as inadequate knowledge about CF cause concern, as well as the lack of time that mothers have to make CF independently. Support also plays an important role in the success of CF, support comes from families and support from Comunity health workers in the form of community-based education.
Conclusions: There are four themes of barriers to complementary breastfeeding which include (1) barriers from health and child response, (2) social, cultural and economic, (3) knowledge and behavior, (4) support system.
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