The beliefs of mothers in southern Brazil regarding risk-factors associated with congenital abnormalities

Abstract

We describes a study in which conventional wisdom about congenital malformations was investigated, the two main objectives being to list mothers' ideas by comparing six well-known causes of congenital abnormalities (ingestion of alcoholic beverages, smoking tobacco, drug use, marriage between relatives (consanguinity), rubella infection, maternal age) with explanations current in the general population and to discover the most common fallacies held by the general population concerning such abnormalities. The data were collected from 1 January to 31 December 1995 during a population study in which mothers were interviewed in hospitals in the city of Pelotas (population 400,000), Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. On each day of the study, the first three mothers to give birth were interviewed, resulting in 3,219 interviewed mothers out of 6,048 births. Our conclusion is that even though conventional wisdom is non-scientific it cannot be ignored because it is the source of a lot of suffering for the mother and can interfere with how she cares for her health . Although erroneous ideas about the causes of congenital abnormalities were more common among mothers from families receiving less than one minimum wage such ideas were found in all socioeconomic groups. In our discussion we emphasize that both mothers and the general public should be made aware of those risk-factors, especially maternal age and consanguinity, that really can cause congenital abnormalities.

Keywords

• congenital abnormalities
• beliefs
• superstition
• pregnancy
• teratogen