Dental prevention among Turkish and Moroccan parents in The Hague

The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which dental prevention among Turkish parents differs from that among Moroccan parents in one of the large cities in the Netherlands.

Turkish and Moroccan mothers with a child of approximately six months old, who visited the well baby clinics in the Schilderswijk area of The Hague, were asked to participate in a dental care project. As part of the initial data collection in this project, 170 Turkish and 153 Moroccan mothers were interviewed at home by a woman who spoke their native languages. The interview contained questions about dental prevention, such as fluoride use, feeding bottle use, visits to the dentist, brushing, information about oral care, and about relevant background characteristics.

More Moroccan than Turkish mother reported that they did not use a feeding bottle for the baby, went to the dentist twice a year, brushed their own teeth at least twice a day and started to brush their children's teeth at an early age. The Moroccan mothers were more committed to dental prevention than Turkish mothers, even after correction for background characteristics such as education, language skills and the number of years spent in the Netherlands.

Ethnic groups should not be seen as a single group for dental prevention. It is recommended that Turkish parents in particular be encouraged to go to the dentist twice a year, to start brushing their children's teeth at an early age and to wean their children off use of a feeding bottle in bed.