Dental attitudes and behavior related to vertical social mobility by marriage.

Following a dental examination of 5-year-old children, the mothers of 367 of them were interviewed. In 262 cases there was sufficient information relating to the social class of both the mother's husband and her father to enable the relationship between social mobility by marriage and the mother's dental attitudes and behavior to be assessed. The results showed that the views of mothers who moved from one social group to another fell between those of the mothers who were static in each of those two groups. Those mothers who were downward mobile had less favorable attitudes than those who had remained in the higher social group but more favorable than those who had always been in the lower social group. The reverse trend was found in upward mobile mothers. A notable exception to this pattern was the group who moved from social Class III into Class I or II. These mothers exhibited attitudes and behavior which were even more favorable than the static social Class I or II mothers. The similarity of these results to those of others in different fields is discussed.