The Influence of Husband Involvement on Women's Postpartum Recovery and Family Relationship: The Case of Beijing

In nowadays China, the tradition of “Doing the Month” still has a significant influence on people’s values and behaviors. However, this is to a great extent challenged by the rapid social economic development as well as the change of family structures. Under this circumstance, the role of the newborn’s father who traditionally used to be excluded from the process of “Doing the Month”, becomes more important than ever before. In this paper, we found that the husband’s involvement (whether husband takes care of the newborn baby at night) not only have a great influence in helping with the wife’s postpartum recovery, but also could improve the spousal even the family relationship. Therefore, relevant social regulations, policies, as well as organizations should further encourage husband to participate more in the puerperal care. So that more harmonious families could be built and more advanced culture of fertility could be promoted.