Impact of Mothers’ Literacy on the Morality, Education, Health and Social Development of their Children

Abstract

This cross sectional interview based study employing four aspects i.e., morality, education, health and social development was conducted to investigate the impact of literate and illiterate mothers on the education of their children. Five hundred and twenty mothers, who had enrolled school going children, by using convenience sampling technique. Equal proportion of literate and illiterate mothers was taken from four tehsils of district Bahawalpur. Tool of study was a self-developed interview having 33 close ended items. The content validity was established by expert opinion method whereas reliability of the tool was calculated by Cronbach’s Alpha method that showed high level consistency in results r=0.95). The study found statistically significant (P<0.05) difference in mean scores of literate and illiterate mothers for moral, educational, health and social development of children. Literate mothers were found to be more conscious in moral, educational, health and social development of their children. This study signifies the need to pay special attention to improve literacy rate in females. There is strong need to make literacy centers for illiterate mothers where they can be taught to improve the ethics and moral values of their children.