Section 3: The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Pregnancy and Childrearing Purpose To examine the socioeconomic status of the study mother, Susan, and assess whether she has similar characteristics to other mothers in the same social class in a local environment, regionally and nationally. The effect of socioeconomic status on different aspects of pregnancy and child care will be discussed. Introduction Significant health inequalities exist between different social classes. Furthermore, lower social classes consistently describe their health as worse than higher social classes [1]. Marmot's central theory is that “the relationship between social circumstances and health is gradual: the higher a person's social position, the better his health” [2]. Social class is measured in several ways. The Registrar General's classification groups different occupations into social classes based on their skill level. One of its weaknesses is that employment does not always adequately reflect income or poverty levels [3]. This flaw has prompted attempts to construct a more satisfactory classification, the National Statistical Socioeconomic Classification (NS-SEC) [4]. Both classifications are outlined in Table 1.Table 1: Occupational Social Class (SC) Indices [5]Registrar General NS-SECI Professional 1. Senior Professionals/ManagersII Intermediate 2. Associate Professionals/Junior ManagersIIIN Non-Manual Qualified 3. Other Administrative and employeesIIIM Skilled workers 4. Non-professionals on their own IV Semi-skilled workers 5. Supervisors, technicians and similarV Unskilled workers 6. Intermediate workers7. Other workers8. Never worked/others inactiveAlan and Susan are both white British and have...... middle of paper ......influences and achievements with decreasing social class. Susan follows all the trends for her social class. She consumes more than 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day and also breastfeeds her baby. Data discussed in the report shows that mothers from higher social classes are more likely to eat a healthy diet rich in fruit and vegetables and to breastfeed their babies. List of tables Table 1: Indices of occupational social class (SC) [5] 1 Table 2 Proportion of breastfeeding mothers by social class [6] 4Table 3 Age of mothers who chose and did not choose to breastfeed [6] 5List of figureFigure 1 Portions of fruit and vegetables consumed (all individuals by social class) [6] 2Figure 2 Estimates of fruit and vegetable consumption in local areas of the North East [12] 3Figure 3 Regional statistics on the start of breastfeeding in England [18] 4