Socioecology shapes child and adolescent time allocation in twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence forager societies

Lew‐Levy, Sheina; Reckin, Rachel; Kissler, Stephen M; Pretelli, Ilaria; Boyette, Adam H.; Crittenden, Alyssa N.; Hagen, Renée V; Haas, Randall; Kramer, Karen L.; Koster, Jeremy; O’Brien, Matthew J.; Sonoda, Koji; Surovell, Todd A.; Stieglitz, Jonathan; Tucker, Bram; Lavi, Noa; Ellis-Davies, Kate; Davis, Helen E.

doi:10.31235/osf.io/94udc

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Our results suggest that children may specialize in fruit and fish/shellfish collection early on, even as they continue to gain skill in more complex tasks as they grow. Furthermore, social learning and social foraging can also scaffold children’s participation in food production, even if they have not yet acquired all underlying skills ( 41 ). For example, children can help identify tuber vines before they are strong enough to collect them themselves.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foraging complexity and the evolution of childhood

2022

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Our species’ long childhood is hypothesized to have evolved as a period for learning complex foraging skills. Researchers studying the development of foraging proficiency have focused on assessing this hypothesis, yet studies present inconsistent conclusions regarding the connection between foraging skill development and niche complexity. Here, we leverage published records of child and adolescent foragers from 28 societies to (i) quantify how skill-intensive different resources are and (ii) assess whether children’s proficiency increases more slowly for more skill-intensive resources. We find that foraging returns increase slowly for more skill-intensive, difficult-to-extract resources (tubers and game), consistent with peak productivity attained in adulthood. Foraging returns for easier-to-extract resources (fruit and fish/shellfish) increase rapidly during childhood, with adult levels of productivity reached by adolescence. Our findings support the view that long childhoods evolved as an extended period for learning to extract complex resources characteristic of the human foraging niche.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foraging complexity and the evolution of childhood

2022

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“…Thus, increasing gender segregation occurs, with downstream effects for children's work. For instance, in a cross-cultural analysis Lew-levy and colleagues [81] find that sex differences in children's work increased in societies with stricter sexual divisions of labour. Cross-culturally girls tend to prefer more face-to-face time with adults, particularly, women, than boys (who more often assort with male peers) [65,72,82].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Page¹,

Migliano²,

Smith³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Worldwide mothers receive help with childcare from a diverse range of individuals (allomothers). Nonetheless, little exploration has occurred into why we see such diversity, such as different strategies used to buffer risk. Wide maternal childcare networks may be a consequence of situations of little material wealth and food storage - as is common in mobile hunter-gatherers - where households rely on the pooling of risk in informal insurance networks. In contrast, when households settle and accumulate wealth and food, they are able to retain the risk by absorbing losses within the household. Thus, the size and composition of mothers’ childcare networks may depend on whether households pool or retain risk, as captured by mobile and settled households in the Agta, a diverse Philippine foraging population. From in-depth observational data on 78 children, we find that childcare from grandmothers and sisters was higher in settled camps, while childcare from male kin was lower. Our findings offer little support for risk buffering, and additional analyses demonstrated that girls’ workloads were increased in settled camps, unlike boys, while grandmothers had fewer dependent children, increasing their availability as allomothers. These results point to gender-specific changes associated with shifting demographics as camps become larger and more settled.

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“…For instance, in a cross-cultural analysis Lew-Levy et al . [111] found that sex differences in children's work increased in societies with stricter sexual divisions of labour. Cross-culturally, girls tend to prefer more face-to-face time with adults, particularly, women, than boys (who more often assort with male peers) [96,102,112].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Page

Migliano

Dyble

et al. 2022

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Women cooperate over multiple domains and while research from western contexts portrays women's networks as limited in size and breadth, women receive help, particularly with childcare, from a diverse range of individuals (allomothers). Nonetheless, little exploration has occurred into why we see such diversity. Wide maternal childcare networks may be a consequence of a lack of resource accumulation in mobile hunter–gatherers—where instead households rely on risk-pooling in informal insurance networks. By contrast, when households settle and accumulate resources, they are able to retain risk by absorbing losses. Thus, the size and composition of mothers' childcare networks may depend on risk-buffering, as captured by mobile and settled households in the Agta, a Philippine foraging population with diverse lifestyles. Across 78 children, we find that childcare from grandmothers and sisters was higher in settled camps, while childcare from male kin was lower, offering little support for risk-buffering. Nonetheless, girls’ workloads were increased in settled camps while grandmothers had fewer dependent children, increasing their availability. These results point to gender-specific changes associated with shifting demographics as camps become larger and more settled. Evidently, women's social networks, rather than being constrained by biology, are responsive to the changing socioecological context. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives’.

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Socioecology shapes child and adolescent time allocation in twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence forager societies

Cited by 7 publications

References 2 publications

Foraging complexity and the evolution of childhood

Foraging complexity and the evolution of childhood

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

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

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