Who cares for women with children? Crossing the bridge between disciplines

Abstract

It has long been acknowledged that women with children require social support to promote their health and wellbeing, as well as that of their children. However, the dominant conceptualizations of support have been heavily influenced by Western family norms. The consequence, at best, has been to stifle our understanding of the nature and consequences of support for mothers and children. At worst, it has led to systematic discrimination negatively impacting maternal–child health. To fully engage with the complexities of social support, we must take multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches spanning diverse cultural and geographical perspectives. However, multidisciplinary knowledge-processing can be challenging, and it is often unclear how different studies from different disciplines relate. To address this, we outline two epistemological frameworks—the scientific approach and Tinbergen's four questions—that can be useful tools in connecting research across disciplines. In this theme issue on ‘Multidisciplinary perspectives on social support and maternal–child health’, we attempt to foster multidisciplinary thinking by presenting work from a diverse range of disciplines, populations and cultures. Our hope is that these tools, along with papers in this issue, help to build a holistic understanding of social support and its consequences for mothers and their children. Overall, a multidisciplinary perspective points to how the responsibility of childrearing should not fall solely onto mothers. Indeed, this multidisciplinary issue demonstrates that successful childrearing is consistently an activity shared beyond the mother and the nuclear family: an insight that is crucial to harnessing the potential of social support to improve maternal–child health. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Multidisciplinary perspectives on social support and maternal–child health’.

Testing the buffering hypothesis: breastfeeding problems, cessation and social support in the UK

“…This indicates that multidimensional social support is an important feature of the postnatal period in the UK, even though women, especially those who are more highly educated, frequently live further from family and friends (Chan & Ermisch, 2015). As we have argued previously (Emmott et al, 2020a(Emmott et al, , 2021Emmott & Mace, 2015;Myers et al, 2021), the benefit of an evolutionary anthropological approach is the exploration of investment transfers to mothers from a wide range of supporters due to the emphasis on cooperative childrearing (Emmott & Page, 2019). An evolutionary framework highlights that there are many mechanisms by which support can work, and support which can facilitate breastfeeding need not be limited to health care professionals.…”

“…How to cite this article: Page, A. E., Emmott, E. H., & Myers, S. (2021). Testing the buffering hypothesis: Breastfeeding problems, cessation, and social support in the UK.…”

“…Increased access to breastfeeding knowledge as well as emotional and practical support may help mothers overcome the often unexpected challenges of breastfeeding (Hough et al, 2018), increasing women's ability to cope and deal with breastfeeding problems. Here, support is operationalized as a "resource transfer" from an individual supporter to the mother (Emmott et al, 2021;Myers et al, 2021). Such transfers or investments span informational, emotional, and practical domains, each predicted to buffer the mother in different ways from the potential negative influence of stressful events, such as breastfeeding problems (Cohen & Wills, 1985).…”

Communication Across Maternal Social Networks During England’s First National Lockdown and Its Association With Postnatal Depressive Symptoms

“…In the United Kingdom, cultural norms of intensive mothering arguably slowed down policy shifts to allow childcare support during periods of lockdown ( Emmott et al, 2021 ), and there have been many reports of partners and other key supporters being prohibited from antenatal appointments and births, financial support packages have been geared toward the male workforce, and there has been widespread rhetoric from politicians and the popular press encouraging the gendered division of childcare responsibilities, all to the detriment of mothers ( Emmott et al, 2021 ). Add to this parenting stresses which are arguably more common in the postnatal period – for instance, sleep deprivation, postpartum pain, the need to learn/relearn skills such as breastfeeding – and it appears reasonable to suggest that postnatal mothers are at particularly high risk of depression during the ongoing pandemic.…”

Male partner participation in maternity care and social support for childbearing women: a discussion paper

“…They should conduct a full baseline assessment of cultural and social factors relevant to the setting, including considering how gender might intersect with other vulnerabilities such as race, poverty, class and disability [10,96]. In this regard, programmes initiated within a health systems framework might benefit from considering multidisciplinary perspectives [97]. Providers' levels of gender competence should be specifically addressed [98].…”