A Sociodemographic Analysis of Mothers Who Abandoned Their Newborn Babies: A Single-Center Study

Abstract

Objective: It is aimed to investigate the sociodemographic characteristics of those mothers who have abandoned their babies legitimately in our hospital and to determine the reasons behind the abandonment. Material and Methods: The medical records of those newborn babies who were abandoned in the period between January 2008 and December 2015 in our hospital and of their mothers were reviewed retrospectively for the sociodemographic characteristics and reasons behind the abandonment. The records were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA, version 20). Results: Sixty-seven abandoned babies (girls 55.2%) were documented in the specified period and included in the study. The number of abandoned babies was observed to be increasing gradually over the years (n=1 in 2008 and n=17 in 2015). Most of the mothers (74.6%) had a low education level (secondary school or less). Of the mothers, 73.1% were unmarried and 62.7% were not working. Pregnancy was due to rape in 28.4% and due to incest in 4.5% of the cases. The primary reasons of abandonment were social reasons (62.7%), among which peer pressure (trying to keep other family members unaware of the pregnancy) was the most frequent (78%). It was observed that the rate of baby abandonment increased as the educational levels of the mothers decreased (p<0.05). Conclusion: In this study, the primary factor for abandonment was peer pressure. There is certainly an immense need to multiply this kind of study into baby abandonment. The study could be considered as a preliminary approach providing tips about the reasons for baby abandonment.