Beyond Attendance: Rethinking Partner Involvement in Reproductive, Maternal, and Family Health

Efforts to improve reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) have historically centered on women as primary recipients of care, with partners often relegated to the sidelines. This prevailing approach overlooks the profound impact that partner involvement can have across the full spectrum of care, including family planning, antenatal attendance, birth preparedness, postpartum support, breastfeeding, and early childhood development. Despite increasing initiatives to promote male involvement, these interventions sometimes risk reinforcing restrictive gender roles, marginalizing non-male partners, or exacerbating inequities within families and health systems. There remains a critical need for research that unpacks the ways parenthood, masculinity norms, relationship dynamics, and health-system factors combine to shape health outcomes for mothers, children, and families.The goal of this Research Topic is to advance an inclusive, evidence-informed understanding of partner engagement in RMNCH. We seek to move beyond surface-level metrics, such as presence at health appointments, and toward insights into how health systems, cultural contexts, and individual experiences interact to support or hinder meaningful involvement. Of particular interest are contributions that address the diversity of partnership and family forms—including fathers, co-parents, same-gender partners, adolescent and migrant parents, and families in crisis or conflict settings. We encourage research that translates experiences and social norms into practical changes at the health-system level, such as policy reforms, training innovations, respectful care protocols, privacy protections, and community or digital interventions. Addressing potential risks—such as coercion, loss of autonomy, or exclusion of certain family types—is equally essential, with an emphasis on equity, rights, and safeguards.This Research Topic seeks manuscripts that explore and evaluate effective, ethical, and contextually relevant strategies for engaging partners in RMNCH, ultimately aiming to enhance gender equality and quality of care. To further the field, we encourage submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:Masculinity, fatherhood, and caregiving: Examining norms, transitions, partner roles, and mental healthHealth systems and service delivery: Facility policies, provider behaviors, financing, and scalable models of engagementEquity, rights, and unintended effects: Autonomy, shared decision-making, family diversity, and potential harmsCommunity, culture, and interventions: Community-based efforts, digital tools, campaigns, and innovative measurement approachesExperiences of miscarriage and pregnancy loss: Grief, identity disruption, and “supporter” roles, plus what support helps partners and couples recoverPartners’ experiences in IVF and surrogacy: emotional labor, role clarity for non-gestational parents, relationship strain, decision-making under uncertainty, and what partner-inclusive supports improve wellbeing across treatment milestones and outcomes. Topic editors: Samuel CUMBER, Catrin Borneskog Sinclair, Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78413/beyond-attendance-rethinking-partner-involvement-in-reproductive-maternal-and-family-health