Unravelling the nuances: A scoping review on fatherhood and men’s participation in antenatal care in rural Sub-Saharan Africa
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Men's participation in antenatal care (ANC) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is shaped by diverse conceptions and experiences of fatherhood. However, most discussions rely on biomedical models that typically view men's participation narrowly as a strategy to increase ANC uptake in mainstream health facilities, often marginalizing culturally specific forms of participation. We aimed to consolidate the existing literature on the complex nuances of how attitudes, knowledge, variations in involvement, and decision-making dynamics influence men's participation in ANC in rural SSA. METHODS: Following the scoping review methodology developed by Arksey and O'Malley, we searched ten databases (African Index Medicus, Africa Journals Online, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, MEDLINE/PubMed, PsycINFO, Sociology Collection, Social Sciences Abstract, Social Sciences Citation Index) for peer-reviewed articles published between January 1st, 2000, and October 31st, 2024. We included only studies that systematically analyzed primary or secondary data to examine fatherhood and men's participation in ANC in a rural setting in SSA. We applied no language restrictions. RESULTS: We identified 7665 articles, full-text reviewed 797 articles, and included 77 articles that reported 58 qualitative, 6 quantitative, and 13 mixed-methods studies conducted in 15 SSA countries. We identified nine themes under three categories addressing our review's objective: 1) three themes described men's attitudes and knowledge around participating in ANC; 2) four themes depicted variations in men's participation in ANC throughout pregnancy; and 3) two themes described how men's participation in ANC was shaped by largely collaborative communal decision-making structures in rural SSA. CONCLUSION: While heterogeneous, the existing body of evidence highlights contextually-valid and socioculturally meaningful nuances that reflect the lived realities of fatherhood and men's participation in ANC across rural SSA. Policymakers and practitioners should leverage these nuances as strengths, and further research should employ Afrocentric approaches to better understand these issues.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.027 | 0.085 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.019 | 0.021 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".