Thomeer Mieke Beth, Ferguson Dee, Crutchfield Candice, Reczek Rin
University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The Ohio State University.
Sociol Compass. 2025 Mar;19(3). doi: 10.1111/soc4.70036. Epub 2025 Mar 16.
Mothers' health outcomes are often distinct from health outcomes of childfree women, yet how and why motherhood matters for health depends on one's history of becoming and being a mother across the life course, as well as the broader structural context in which the mother is embedded. We develop the motherhood biographies conceptual framework to understand links between motherhood and health throughout the life course and across social positions, drawing on theories from family and medical sociology, social psychology, and critical feminist perspectives. We advocate that social scientists interested in how and why motherhood matters for the wide range of health outcomes across mental, physical, cognitive, and behavioral health use this holistic motherhood biographies approach, which allows researchers to incorporate multiple components of motherhood transitions and experiences over the life course into a comprehensive and flexible motherhood construct. The motherhood biography construct further emphasizes the importance of intersectional differences and similarities across and within groups of mothers. We further provide a preliminary roadmap of methodological tools and data needs to leverage this concept, and we point to utility of the motherhood biography perspective in testing how, when, and why motherhood matters for all aspects of health.
母亲的健康状况往往与未育女性的健康状况不同，然而母亲身份对健康产生影响的方式和原因取决于一个人在整个生命历程中成为母亲并作为母亲的经历，以及母亲所处的更广泛的社会结构背景。我们构建了母亲身份传记概念框架，以理解母亲身份与整个生命历程及不同社会地位下健康之间的联系，该框架借鉴了家庭与医学社会学、社会心理学以及批判女性主义视角的理论。我们主张，关注母亲身份如何以及为何对心理、身体、认知和行为健康等广泛健康结果产生影响的社会科学家，采用这种整体的母亲身份传记方法，这使研究人员能够将母亲身份转变和生命历程中的经历的多个组成部分纳入一个全面且灵活的母亲身份建构中。母亲身份传记建构进一步强调了母亲群体之间及内部交叉差异和相似性的重要性。我们还提供了利用这一概念的方法工具和数据需求的初步路线图，并指出母亲身份传记视角在检验母亲身份如何、何时以及为何对健康的各个方面产生影响方面的效用。
