Repercussions of patrilocal residence on mothers' social support networks among Tsimane forager–farmers

Abstract

While it is commonly thought that patrilocality is associated with worse outcomes for women and their children due to lower social support, few studies have examined whether the structure of female social networks covaries with post-marital residence. Here, we analyse scan sample data collected among Tsimane forager–farmers. We compare the social groups and activity partners of 181 women residing in the same community as their parents, their husband's parents, both or neither. Relative to women living closer to their in-laws, women living closer to their parents are less likely to be alone or solely in the company of their nuclear family (odds ratio (OR): 0.6, 95% CI: 0.3–0.9), and more likely to be observed with others when engaging in food processing and manufacturing of market or household goods, but not other activities. Women are slightly more likely to receive childcare support from outside the nuclear family when they live closer to their parents (OR = 1.8, 95% CI 0.8–3.9). Their social group size and their children's probability of receiving allocare decrease significantly with distance from their parents, but not their in-laws. Our findings highlight the importance of women's proximity to kin, but also indicate that patrilocality per se is not costly to Tsimane women. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives’.

Sedentarization and maternal childcare networks: role of risk, gender and demography

“…This suggests that's Hrdy's [ 84 ] assertion was well founded, that mothers require large, flexible networks to ensure they receive the help required. Therefore, in line with other contributions to this special issue, women are not constrained to small, dyadic networks [ 1 , 10 , 85 ]. Interestingly, the low-investment networks were large, comprising of, on average, 25 different allomothers over the course of the 3 days of observations.…”

“…Overall, while the ‘settled’ and ‘mobile’ Agta communities are part of the same population with a continuous gradient of livelihood change, the flexibility of human childcare is noteworthy, as the identity of the carers did vary. This highlights the flexibility of women's social networks documented here and elsewhere, and demonstrates them as the outcome of demographic trends, gender roles, post-martial residence norms [ 85 ] and different modes of subsistence [ 1 , 10 , 56 ], rather than being constrained. Future research should keep probing the structure of this flexibility to help us better understand the functions of women's social networks and allomothering and how they are expected to change within transitioning populations.…”

Dynamics of cooperative networks associated with gender among South Indian Tamils

“…[ 16 , 107 ] and Seabright et al . [ 108 ], both in this issue, in addition to Macfarlan et al . [ 19 ]).…”

New perspectives on the evolution of women's cooperation

“…In a similar finding, the social group size of Tsimane women (South American horticulturalists) did not differ between women in different post-marital residence settings when they engaged in activities such as gardening and wage labour, manufacturing and resource acquisition. However, the distance a woman lived from her parents, regardless of whether she lived patrilocally, matrilocally or neolocally, influenced her social group size and her probability of receiving allocare ([ 98 ], in this issue). Likewise, among the patrilineal Mosuo, women's food preparation networks were better predicted by geographical distance than by genetic relatedness ([ 81 ], in this issue).…”