Maternal grandmothers play a key role in allomaternal care, directly caring for and provisioning their grandchildren as well as helping their daughters with household chores and productive labor. Previous studies have investigated these contributions across a broad time period, from infancy through toddlerhood. Here, we extend and refine the grandmothering literature to investigate the perinatal period as a critical window for grandmaternal contributions. We propose that mother-daughter co-residence during this period affords targeted grandmaternal effort during a period of heightened vulnerability and appreciable impact. We conducted two focus groups and 37 semi-structured interviews with Himba women. Interviews focused on experiences from their first and, if applicable, their most recent birth and included information on social support, domains of teaching and learning, and infant feeding practices. Our qualitative findings reveal three domains in which grandmothers contribute: learning to mother, breastfeeding support, and postnatal health and well-being. We show that informational, emotional, and instrumental support provided to new mothers and their neonates during the perinatal period can aid in the establishment of the mother-infant bond, buffer maternal energy balance, and improve nutritional outcomes for infants. These findings demonstrate that the role of grandmother can be crucial, even when alloparenting is common and breastfeeding is frequent and highly visible. Situated within the broader anthropological and clinical literature, these findings substantiate the claim that humans have evolved in an adaptive sociocultural perinatal complex in which grandmothers provide significant contributions to the health and well-being of their reproductive-age daughters and grandchildren.

中文翻译：

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重要贡献

产妇的祖母在异常母体护理中起着关键作用，直接照料和养育他们的孙子并帮助女儿做家务和生产劳动。以前的研究已经调查了从婴儿期到幼儿期的广泛时期内的这些贡献。在这里，我们扩展和完善了祖母文献，以调查围产期作为祖母贡献的重要窗口。我们建议，在此期间，母女共同居住可在脆弱性加剧和影响显着的时期提供有针对性的祖母努力。我们对辛巴族妇女进行了两个焦点小组和37次半结构化访谈。访谈的重点是初生以及最近出生时的经历，并包括有关社会支持的信息，教学领域以及婴儿喂养方法。我们的定性发现揭示了祖母在三个方面的贡献：向母亲学习，母乳喂养支持以及产后健康和福祉。我们表明，围产期向新妈妈及其新生儿提供的信息，情感和工具支持可以帮助建立母婴纽带，缓冲母体能量平衡并改善婴儿的营养结果。这些发现表明，即使在同种异体育种很普遍且母乳喂养频繁且高度可见的情况下，祖母的作用也至关重要。在更广泛的人类学和临床文献中，