Self Esteem and its Associated Factors in Primiparous mothers Referred to health centers in the city of Mashhad

Background and aims: Breastfeeding is one of the most effective behaviors to health promotion. One of the factors that affect on successful breastfeeding is motherchr('39')s self-esteem. With regard consequences of low self-esteem that have negative impact on interpersonal relationships, thinking, feeling and person, practice, this study aimed to determine self-esteem and its related factors in primiparous women. Methods: In this descriptive study, 300 Primiparous lactating mothers with children less than 6 months, referred to health centers in the Mashhad city were selected by multistage random sampling. Data collection was completed by Rosenberg Self esteem questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS software through Spearman correlation test, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney. Results: The mean and standard deviation of maternal self-esteem were 28.98 ± 2.76. Most of women (94.33%) had the average level of self-esteem and only a small percentage of women (1.33%) had high self-esteem. Based on the results, there was a negative significant relationship between self-esteem and the childchr('39')s age (P=0.01). In other cases, the relationship between self-esteem and variables such as age, education and income were not significant (P>0.05). Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the self-esteem mean score of most nulliparous women during breast-feeding was moderate and due to the fact that the self-esteem affects their self-efficacy, feeling and performance, it is suggested that midwives and other health professionals consider psychosocial aspects that they affect self-esteem of breastfeeding mothers and do some measurements on self-esteem of these individuals in order to increase it