UCL Anthropology, University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW, UK.
Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, UK.
Soc Sci Med. 2020 May;252:112944. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112944. Epub 2020 Mar 24.
We welcome the comments by Harpur and Haddon (2020) on our paper on the typologies of social support and its associations with breastfeeding at two months in a UK sample. We share their concerns around the under-acknowledged costs of breastfeeding, and the need for a truly family-centred approach to breastfeeding support. However, they are mistaken to assume we do not view breastfeeding problems as an important cost of breastfeeding: We explicitly comment on breastfeeding challenges within our paper, and such challenges are theoretically incorporated into the "costs of breastfeeding" following an evolutionary anthropological framework. They are also incorrect in their statement that we recommend breastfeeding promotion messages to wider family members. In fact, we outline in our manuscript that breastfeeding promotional messages can have negative consequences for mothers, and are unlikely to be supportive. What we do suggest is a family-centred approach that recognises that women interact with, and may be supported by, a wide range of individuals (including fathers and grandmothers); and the importance of taking a nuanced approach to support without assuming that all types of support necessarily leads to "more breastfeeding." We hope our response is useful in clarifying the key points of our paper.
我们欢迎哈普尔和哈登（2020）对我们关于英国样本中社会支持类型及其与两个月母乳喂养关系的论文的评论。我们同意他们对母乳喂养成本被低估的担忧，以及需要真正以家庭为中心的母乳喂养支持方法。然而，他们错误地认为我们不认为母乳喂养问题是母乳喂养的一个重要成本：我们在论文中明确评论了母乳喂养的挑战，并且根据进化人类学框架，这些挑战在理论上被纳入“母乳喂养的成本”中。他们还错误地声称我们建议向更广泛的家庭成员传播母乳喂养的信息。事实上，我们在论文中概述了母乳喂养的宣传信息可能对母亲产生负面影响，而且不太可能得到支持。我们所建议的是以家庭为中心的方法，认识到女性与广泛的个体（包括父亲和祖母）互动，并可能得到他们的支持；以及在不假设所有类型的支持都必然导致“更多母乳喂养”的情况下，采取细致入微的支持方法的重要性。我们希望我们的回应有助于澄清我们论文的要点。
