Purpose: This study was carried out to assess the socio-cultural factors influencing child nutrition among mothers in Calabar Municipality, Cross: River State Nigeria. In order to successfully carry out the study, objectives and corresponding hypothesis’were1 formulated to guide the study. Literature was reviewed based on the research variables, Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive survey design was used for the study in Calabar Municipality, Cross River State. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 5 communities from the L.G.A. for the study and snowball non-probability sampling techniques was used to select the subjects for the study. The target population was unknown; a sample size of 376 was determined using Golden formula for infinite population. Their responses were analyzed using frequencies, percentage and Chi-square analysis and the following results were obtained. Result: The study reveal that majority of the respondents believed that feeding children with egg, meat and fish makes them thieves with mean value response of 3.48 and 3.53 respectively while majority also disagreed with stopping breastfeeding in the advent of a new pregnancy with mean value score of 2.03. majority also disagreed that their cultural practices had influence on the nutritional status of their children with a mean response value of 1.82 but the grand mean score of 2.77 and SD score of 0.64 which is greater than the criterion mean of 2.5 confirms that religious and cultural practices has an influence on the nutritional status of children. Conclusion: Socio-economic status of the family like the occupation of breadwinner, the person who controls the finance, and poor living conditions (inadequate water supply, inadequate sanitations), with a grand mean score of 2.91 has a negative influence on the nutritional status of children.
Keywords: Factors Influencing, Mothers, Socio-cultural, child nutrition
