Introduction

Part of the Family Structure group of Concepts, Mother of a Child discusses the definition and data methodology for specifying Mother to one or more specified Children.

Definition and additional background information

In a strict sense Mother of a Child refers to the biological mother. The birth record in hospital claims provides a definitive link between Mother and Child, although this link is missing for children born outside of hospital or who immigrate to Manitoba.

For children born to mothers under a midwife’s care, data from the Midwifery Summary System provides information on location of birth, as well as mother and child SCRPHIN for births April 2000 onward.

In a larger sense Mother of a Child refers to a woman who is listed in the Registry as the Family Head of a family with one or more dependent children, who may be their biological children or not. This definition largely agrees with the hospital-based definition above, but also includes children born outside of hospital and mother/child newcomers to Manitoba.

Methods

The specific method for identifying the mother of a child is currently being developed, and is dependent on the data that is available for determining the mother of a child.

We will include the code that:


1. describes the method of identifying the mother's SCRPHIN from the Mother/Baby linkage file; and
   
2. describes the method of finding the Female Family Head of the family REGNO group the child is born into.