BACKGROUND: Most African societies have no tradition of idealized celibacy or voluntary childlessness. Although the norms on parenthood are changing, adults are customarily expected to marry and bear children. AIM: This study examined the perceived value of children among infertile couples in Kwara South, Nigeria. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven infertile couples recruited through snowball sampling technique. Data were organized using ATLAS.ti 8 and analyzed by thematic analysis. RESULTS: The study revealed that perceptions of the value of children are embedded in sociocultural norms and are strongly linked to religion, patriarchy, and the need for family/marriage sustainability. Childbearing was perceived as the fulfillment of divine injunction; as such, children were regarded as divine. While women believed children are sources of fulfillment and balanced life, most men saw them as life itself. Boys are collectively thought to ensure lineage security and confer honor and prestige on men. A child is believed to give women a permanent seat in marriage. CONCLUSIONS: These insights on the values of children within the Nigerian cultural context can be inculcated in programs and services targeted at alleviating the effect of infertility on childless couples. Innovative cultural programs that will increase the worth of the girl child are also encouraged.

Pertanika Journal information and guidelines

Background: Undernutrition among infants and young children in South Asia remains a major public health concern, contributing to high rates of morbidity and mortality. While quantitative systematic reviews have identified various risk factors for undernutrition, no review has focused on qualitative studies. This study aims to review published literature on family member and healthcare provider perceptions about influences on undernutrition among infants and young children in South Asia. Methods: We searched for qualitative research articles published from 2000 to 2026 in the PubMed, Scopus and CINAHL databases, and used the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) tool to assess the quality of selected articles. Selected articles were analyzed thematically. The PROSPERO registration number is CRD42022385382. Results: After screening 201 research articles, 19 articles were selected for inclusion in this review. Perceived influences of undernutrition among children were categorized into individual, socio-cultural, economic, environmental and system factors. Interconnected influences included maternal illness, single motherhood, mothers’ knowledge and awareness, convenience of providing low-quality ready-made and junk food, spiritual beliefs and superstition, violence against women, financial constraints in a context of rising food prices and seasonal impacts on food production, and physical accessibility of healthcare services. Conclusions: This review emphasizes the complex interplay of influences on undernutrition among young children in South Asia. Potential interventions must be culturally tailored and gender-sensitive, with key strategies including nutrition education, community-based support, maternal health improvements, and policies addressing food insecurity and healthcare accessibility.

Background and objective: Child illness remains a significant public health challenge in low- and middle-income countries, including Bangladesh, with complex multifactorial causes extending beyond biomedical factors. This qualitative study explored perceived causes of child illness from the perspectives of caregivers and healthcare providers in rural and urban Bangladesh. Methods: Twenty-three in-depth interviews with primary caregivers, grandmothers, healthcare providers, and a group discussion with four community representatives revealed four primary categories of perceived illness causes. Results: Individual causes included maternal illness, forgetfulness, and knowledge gaps that affected caregiving practices, leading to missed vaccinations, poor hygiene and feeding practices. Socio-cultural causes included supernatural beliefs, intra-household power dynamics, domestic violence, maternal work burdens, early marriage, adolescent motherhood, and dowry practices. Economic causes included irregular income, rising food prices, and marketing of unhealthy products. Environmental causes included poor housing ventilation, inadequate waste management, heat wave exposure, urban air pollution, and water contamination, causing respiratory and waterborne diseases. Conclusions: These findings illustrate that child illness results from complex interactions between individual, socio-cultural, economic, and environmental causes. Potential interventions can address these multifaceted causes through comprehensive approaches including caregiver education, maternal empowerment strategies, economic support programs, and household environment improvements.

Introduction: Community-based acupuncture care provides a useful setting for examining how patients judge treatment within plural healthcare systems. Methods: Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Baise, Guangxi, including more than 300 h of participant observation and 29 in-depth interviews with 17 participants (11 patients, 10 of whom were women, and 6 practitioners), this study examines how patients decide whether acupuncture is plausible, safe, and worth continuing. The study focuses on patient-reported improvement; standardized clinical outcome measures were not collected. Lay therapeutic evidence refers here to the bodily, temporal, practical, social, and relational grounds patients use in making these judgments. Results: Patients compared bodily change over time, weighed treatment against work, family responsibilities, cost, and medication burden, consulted interpersonal and digital sources, and assessed practitioner explanation, attentiveness, visible safety practices, and referral decisions. Their judgments remained provisional: relief could coexist with doubt, trust with continued biomedical monitoring, and recommendation with hesitation. Discussion: The study conceptualizes therapeutic credibility as an ongoing and revisable judgment assembled from these everyday evaluations. It contributes to medical sociology by showing how patient-reported improvement becomes consequential in plural care through continuing comparison, interpretation, and revision.