Fathers' care in context: ‘facultative,’ flexible fathers respond to work demands and child age, but not to alloparental help, in Cebu, Philippines

Rosenbaum, Stacy; Kuzawa, Christopher W.; McDade, Thomas W.; Avila, Josephine L.; Bechayda, Sonny Agustin; Gettler, Lee T.

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2021.05.003

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 104 publications

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“…Female labor force participation may also help shed light on the finding from 2014 that higher SES families were somewhat more reliant on alloparental assistance than counterparts with lower educational attainment, and to some degree, less wealth. In a previous analysis of 2014 data, we found that men who worked more hours outside the home spent less time on parenting, although we did not find evidence of a paternal care/alloparental care tradeoff (Rosenbaum et al, 2021). This does not preclude the possibility that such a tradeoff exists for mothers in Cebu, or for combined parental effort.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 77%

“…Wherever possible, these are consistent with definitions used in previously-published analyses (e.g. Carba et al, 2009;Gettler et al, 2019;Rosenbaum et al, 2021). Amount of alloparental care was quantified in different ways in the three survey waves, consistent with the questionnaires that were administered at the time (see Table 1 and supplementary materials).…”

Section: Measuring Alloparental Carementioning

confidence: 81%

“…This could reduce the need for alloparental care. However, using these 2014 data, we recently found that fathers report doing more childcare when they receive more help from alloparental caregivers, suggesting this is unlikely to explain the link between 1994 paternal absence and 2014 alloparental care usage (Rosenbaum et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…In all survey years, mothers had the option of reporting that unrelated individuals, including paid caregivers, helped take care of the children. Paid care is relatively uncommon in Cebu, especially at daycare facilities or other similar sites outside the home (Rosenbaum et al, 2021). However, small numbers of families in all three time periods had live-in help who either directly assisted with childcare, or whose help with other tasks may have freed up other potential caregivers to do more (1980s: 123 of 1327 families; 1994: 37 of 984; 2014: 12 of 428).…”

Section: Measuring Alloparental Carementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This diversity is representative of a large and quickly-growing subset of the world's population, who increasingly live in metropolitan areas of LMICs (The World Bank, 2020). Moreover, unlike in many Euro-American contexts where caregiving is heavily nuclear-family focused, alloparental caregiving is culturally valued and has historically been an important source of childcare in the Philippines (Medina, 2001;Rosenbaum et al, 2021;Tiefenthaler, 1997). Data from such settings provides an opportunity to test predictions derived from behavioral ecology and developmental psychology theories about the relationship between HUEs and alloparental caregiving, within the context of a single large-scale population.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neither environmental unpredictability nor harshness predict reliance on alloparental care among families in Cebu, Philippines

et al. 2022

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Alloparental caregiving is key to humans’ highly flexible reproductive strategies. Across species and across societies, alloparental care is more common in harsh and/or unpredictable environments (HUEs). Currently, however, it is unclear whether HUEs predict intra-population variation in alloparental care, or whether early life HUEs might predict later alloparental care use in adulthood, consistent with adaptive developmental plasticity. We test whether harshness measures (socioeconomic status (SES), environmental hygiene, crowding) and unpredictability measures (parental unemployment, paternal absence, household moves) predicted how much alloparental assistance families in Cebu, Philippines received, in a multigenerational study with data collected across four decades. Though worse environmental hygiene predicted more concurrent alloparental care in 1994, we found little evidence that HUEs predict within-population variation in alloparental care in this large-scale, industrialized society. Indeed, less-crowded conditions and higher SES predicted more alloparental care, not less, in the 1980s and in 2014 respectively, while paternal absence in middle childhood predicted less reliance on alloparental care in adulthood. In this cultural context, our results generally do not provide support for the translation of interspecific or intersocietal patterns linking HUEs and alloparental care to intra-population variation in alloparental care, nor for the idea that a reproductive strategy emphasizing alloparental care use may be preceded by early life HUEs.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 77%

Section: Measuring Alloparental Carementioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Measuring Alloparental Carementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neither environmental unpredictability nor harshness predict reliance on alloparental care among families in Cebu, Philippines

et al. 2022

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Interactions with alloparents are associated with the diversity of infant skin and fecal bacterial communities in Chicago, United States

Manus,

Sardaro,

Dada

et al. 2023

American J Hum Biol

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Introduction: Social interactions shape the infant microbiome by providing opportunities for caregivers to spread bacteria through physical contact. With most research focused on the impact of maternal–infant contact on the infant gut microbiome, it is unclear how alloparents (i.e., caregivers other than the parents) influence the bacterial communities of infant body sites that are frequently contacted during bouts of caregiving, including the skin.Methods: To begin to understand how allocare may influence the diversity of the infant microbiome, detailed questionnaire data on infant–alloparent relationships and specific allocare behaviors were coupled with skin and fecal microbiome samples (four body sites) from 48 infants living in Chicago, United States.Results: Data from 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing indicated that infant skin and fecal bacterial diversity showed strong associations (positive and negative) to having female adult alloparents. Alloparental feeding and co‐sleeping displayed stronger associations to infant bacterial diversity compared to playing or holding. The associations with allocare behaviors differed in magnitude and direction across infant body sites. Bacterial relative abundances varied by infant–alloparent relationship and breastfeeding status.Conclusion: This study provides some of the first evidence of an association between allocare and infant skin and fecal bacterial diversity. The results suggest that infants' exposure to bacteria from the social environment may vary based on infant–alloparent relationships and allocare behaviors. Since the microbiome influences immune system development, variation in allocare that impacts the diversity of infant bacterial communities may be an underexplored dimension of the social determinants of health in early life.

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Religious Involvement Is Associated With Higher Fertility and Lower Maternal Investment, but More Alloparental Support Among Gambian Mothers

Shaver,

Chvaja,

Spake

et al. 2024

American J Hum Biol

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ObjectivesHuman childrearing is cooperative, with women often able to achieve relatively high fertility through help from many individuals. Previous work has documented tremendous socioecological variation in who supports women in childrearing, but less is known about the intracultural correlates of variation in allomaternal support. In the highly religious, high‐fertility setting of The Gambia, we studied whether religious mothers have more children and receive more support with their children.MethodsWe randomly sampled 395 mothers and 745 focal children enrolled in the Kiang West (The Gambia) Longitudinal Population Study cohort. Structured interviews asked mothers who and how often people invest in their children, and about their religious practices. Data were collected at participants' homes on electronic tablet‐based long‐form surveys and analyzed using the Bayesian hierarchical models.ResultsReligiosity was weakly associated with women's higher age‐adjusted fertility. Maternal religiosity was negatively related to maternal investment in focal children, but positively associated with total allomaternal support. Specifically, a woman's religiosity was positively associated with allomaternal support from matrilineal kin, other offspring, and affinal kin, but unrelated to paternal, patrilineal, and non‐kin investment.ConclusionsThese results suggest that higher fertility among religious mothers may be supported by high levels of investment from biological and affinal kin. Matrilineal kin, other siblings, and affinal kin seem to be the most responsive to a woman's religiosity. Our findings cast doubt on interpretations of women's religious behaviors as signals of fidelity, and instead suggest they may be part of strategies to enable collective allomaternal resources and higher relative fertility.

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Fathers' care in context: ‘facultative,’ flexible fathers respond to work demands and child age, but not to alloparental help, in Cebu, Philippines

Cited by 9 publications

References 104 publications

Neither environmental unpredictability nor harshness predict reliance on alloparental care among families in Cebu, Philippines

Neither environmental unpredictability nor harshness predict reliance on alloparental care among families in Cebu, Philippines

Interactions with alloparents are associated with the diversity of infant skin and fecal bacterial communities in Chicago, United States

Religious Involvement Is Associated With Higher Fertility and Lower Maternal Investment, but More Alloparental Support Among Gambian Mothers

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