UCL Anthropology, University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW, UK.
BirthRites Independent Max Planck Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Jun 21;376(1827):20200019. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0019. Epub 2021 May 3.
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'.
长期以来，人们一直认为，有孩子的女性需要社会支持来促进她们自己和孩子的健康。然而，支持的主流概念受到了西方家庭规范的严重影响。其结果，最多不过是阻碍了我们对支持母亲和孩子的性质和后果的理解。最糟糕的是，这导致了对母婴健康的系统歧视。为了充分理解社会支持的复杂性，我们必须采取多学科或跨学科的方法，涵盖不同的文化和地理视角。然而，多学科的知识处理可能具有挑战性，而且通常不清楚来自不同学科的不同研究之间的关系。为了解决这个问题，我们概述了两个认识论框架——科学方法和丁伯根的四个问题——这可以作为在跨学科研究中连接研究的有用工具。在本期关于“社会支持和母婴健康的多学科视角”的主题中，我们试图通过展示来自不同学科、人群和文化的多样化工作来促进多学科思维。我们希望这些工具以及本期的论文能够帮助人们全面理解社会支持及其对母亲和子女的影响。总的来说，多学科视角表明，育儿的责任不应仅仅落在母亲身上。事实上，这个多学科问题表明，成功的育儿活动始终是超越母亲和核心家庭的共同活动：这一观点对于利用社会支持的潜力来改善母婴健康至关重要。本文是“社会支持和母婴健康的多学科视角”主题特刊的一部分。
