# Oral health status of Egyptian mothers and their preschool children: association of mother’s oral health literacy and marital satisfaction- a cross-sectional study

## TL;DR

This study explores how a mother's oral health knowledge and marital satisfaction relate to her and her preschool child's oral health in Egypt.

## Contribution

It is the first to investigate the association between marital satisfaction and oral health in mothers and their children.

## Key findings

- Higher marital satisfaction was negatively correlated with worse oral health indicators in mothers and children.
- Oral health literacy showed a positive correlation with dental decay but a negative correlation with plaque and gum inflammation.

## Abstract

Oral health literacy (OHL) and marital satisfaction (MS) are known to affect the overall health and quality of life of parents and their children. A possible relation between MS and oral health has never been studied before. We aimed to; first; assess levels of OHL and MS of Egyptian mothers, and second; investigate a possible relation between these levels and the oral health status of the mothers and their preschool children.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on 130 preschool-aged children and their mothers utilizing a structured, questionnaire consisting of three sections; 1- demographic and oral health-related data; 2- seven questions of ENRICH Marital Satisfaction (EMS) Scale of mothers, and 3-A modified Arabic Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Dentistry (A-REALD-30) to measure the mother’s ability to read 30 commonly used dental terms. Clinical examination of the participants was conducted afterwards to evaluate the oral health status using the Decay, missed filled teeth (DMFT), dmft, plaque, and gingival indices (PI and GI).

The mean (SD) of DMF, PI, and GI for mothers were 5.07(3.41), 1.29(0.45), and 1.13(0.52) respectively. Children’s mean (SD) dmft was 5.42(3.27), the mean (SD) of total EMS and A-REALD-30 scores were 23.41(6.79) and 21.65(6.02) respectively. There was a positive correlation between the EMS score and A-REALD-30, p-value=0.44, and r=0.068, a negative correlation between EMS score and DMFT, dmft, PI, and GI, p-value=0.0043, 0.032, 0.956, and 0.730, and r=0.253, 0.188, 0.005, and 0.031, respectively. Whereas A-REALD-30 showed a positive correlation with the DMFT and dmft, and a negative correlation with PI and GI p-value=0.549, 0.412, 0.158, and 0.670, and r=0.053, 0.073, 0.125, and 0.038, respectively.

Within our limitations, this work showed for the first time that there is a possible association between MS and oral health status of mothers and their preschool children. Further, this work unexpectedly showed a positive relation between A REALD-30 and DMFTs implying that REALD-30 alone would not be enough and is suggested to be used with other tools to assess OHL levels. Further long-term studies are needed to clarify how literacy and marital status affect oral health.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12903-025-06099-8.