Dimensions of Fatherhood in a Congo Basin Village: A Multimethod Analysis of Intracultural Variation in Men's Parenting and Its Relevance for Child Health
Dimensions of Fatherhood in a Congo Basin Village: A Multimethod Analysis of Intracultural Variation in Men's Parenting and Its Relevance for Child Health
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DOI：
10.1086/700717
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发表时间：
2018-12-01
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
Gettler, Lee T.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Boyette, Adam H.;Lew-Levy, Sheina;Gettler, Lee T.
父亲的直接照顾（例如携带、敏感照顾、文化传播）可以潜在地改善儿童的健康、福祉和社会发展。然而，父亲在这些领域中的角色在文化之间和文化内部的差异仍未得到充分研究，特别是在小规模社会的工作中，而且我们对这些角色如何与间接的父亲照顾（例如供给、资源保护）相交叉以塑造儿童健康结果知之甚少。我们使用来自刚果共和国邦东戈渔民的数据来测试男性对当地父亲文化模式的相对适应度与孩子健康之间的关系，通过当地认知、人体测量学、社会心理压力生物标志物（EB 病毒 [EBV] 抗体）和免疫激活（C 反应蛋白；CRP）来衡量。结果表明，邦东戈的父亲身份是多维的，更高质量的直接护理与更好的儿童健康和成长相关，而与间接护理的关系则不太明确。此外，父亲的照顾与 CRP 或 EBV 无关，但婚姻纠纷与 EBV 抗体滴度升高相关，这表明社会心理压力与这些家庭动态有关。因此，邦东戈父亲的照顾有助于塑造儿童的健康，符合当地文化模式和进化框架，表明古人类父亲角色具有广泛而灵活的作用。
Fathers' direct care (e.g., carrying, sensitive caregiving, cultural transmission) can potentially improve children's health, well-being, and social development. However, between- and within-culture variation in fathers' roles in these domains remains understudied, particularly in work on small-scale societies, and we know relatively little about how these roles intersect with indirect paternal care (e.g., provisioning, resource defense) to shape child health outcomes. We use data from Bondongo fisher-farmers of the Republic of the Congo to test the relationship between a man's relative fit to a local cultural model of fatherhood and his children's health as measured by local perceptions, anthropometrics, and biomarkers of psychosocial stress (Epstein-Barr virus [EBV] antibodies) and immune activation (C-reactive protein; CRP). Results indicate that Bondongo fatherhood is multidimensional and that higher-quality direct care is associated with better child health and growth, whereas the association with indirect care is less clear. Additionally, paternal care was unrelated to CRP or EBV, but marital disputes correlated with elevated EBV antibody titers, suggesting that psychosocial stress is related to these family dynamics. Thus, Bondongo fathers' care helps shape children's health, consistent with the local cultural model and evolutionary frameworks suggesting a broad and flexible role for hominin fatherhood.