Women's subsistence strategies predict fertility across cultures, but context matters.

While it is commonly assumed that farmers have higher, and foragers lower, fertility compared to populations practicing other forms of subsistence, robust supportive evidence is lacking. We tested whether subsistence activities-incorporating market integration-are associated with fertility in 10,250 women from 27 small-scale societies and found considerable variation in fertility. This variation did not align with group-level subsistence typologies. Societies labeled as "farmers" did not have higher fertility than others, while "foragers" did not have lower fertility. However, at the individual level, we found strong evidence that fertility was positively associated with farming and moderate evidence of a negative relationship between foraging and fertility. Markers of market integration were strongly negatively correlated with fertility. Despite strong cross-cultural evidence, these relationships were not consistent in all populations, highlighting the importance of the socioecological context, which likely influences the diverse mechanisms driving the relationship between fertility and subsistence.

Child and adolescent foraging: New directions in evolutionary research.

Young children and adolescents in subsistence societies forage for a wide range of resources. They often target child-specific foods, they can be very successful foragers, and they share their produce widely within and outside of their nuclear family. At the same time, while foraging, they face risky situations and are exposed to diseases that can influence their immune development. However, children's foraging has largely been explained in light of their future (adult) behavior. Here, we reinterpret findings from human behavioral ecology, evolutionary medicine and cultural evolution to center foraging children's contributions to life history evolution, community resilience and immune development. We highlight the need to foreground immediate alongside delayed benefits and costs of foraging, including inclusive fitness benefits, when discussing children's food production from an evolutionary perspective. We conclude by recommending that researchers carefully consider children's social and ecological context, develop cross-cultural perspectives, and incorporate children's foraging into Indigenous sovereignty discourse.

Uncertainty in a globalizing world. Livelihood and fertility variance increases in response to rapid change.

OBJECTIVES: The extreme condition that we address in this special issue is how people adapt to rapid change, which in this case study is instigated by globalization and the process of market integration. Although market integration has been underway for centuries in some parts of the world, it often occurs precipitously in small-scale societies, initiating an abrupt break with traditional ways of life and fostering a keen sense of uncertainty. METHODS: Using cross sections from 30-years of data collected in a Yucatec Maya subsistence farming community, we test the expectation that when payoffs to pursue new livelihood and reproductive options are uncertain, variance in social, economic, and reproductive traits will increase in the population. Our data span the transition from subsistence farming to a mixed economy, and bridge the transition from natural to contracepting fertility. Exposure to globalizing and market forces occurred when a paved road was built in the early 2000s. RESULTS: We find that livelihood traits (a household's primary economic strategy, amount of land under cultivation, amount of maize and honey sold), become more variable as new, but uncertain options become available. Variance in levels of education and family size likewise immediately increase following the road, but show signs of settling back down a decade later. Rather than replacing one way of life with another, Maya farmers conservatively adopt some new elements (family planning, wage labor), until the tradeoffs to commit to smaller families and the labor market become clearer. CONCLUSION: Our findings highlight that in rapidly changing environments when the payoffs to assimilate new options are uncertain, some households and individuals intensify what they know best, while others adopt new opportunities, driving variance up in the population.

Sleep tight! Adolescent sleep quality across three distinct sleep ecologies.

Background and objectives: Good sleep quality, associated with few arousals, no daytime sleepiness and self-satisfaction with one's sleep, is pivotal for adolescent growth, maturation, cognition and overall health. This article aims to identify what ecological factors impact adolescent sleep quality across three distinct sleep ecologies representing a gradient of dense urbanity to small, rural environments with scarce artificial lighting and no Internet. Methodology: We analyze variation of sleep efficiency, a quantitative measure of sleep quality-defined as the ratio of total time spent asleep to total time dedicated to sleep-in two agricultural indigenous populations and one post-industrial group in Mexico (Campeche = 44, Puebla = 51, Mexico City = 50, respectively). Data collection included actigraphy, sleep diaries, questionnaires, interviews and ethnographic observations. We fit linear models to examine sleep efficiency variation within and between groups. Results: We found that sleep efficiency varied significantly across sites, being highest in Mexico City (88%) and lowest in Campeche (75%). We found that variation in sleep efficiency was significantly associated with nightly exposure to light and social sleep practices. Conclusions and implications: Our findings point toward contextual cost-benefits of sleep disruption in adolescence. We highlight the need to prioritize research on adolescent sleep quality across distinct developmental ecologies and its impact on health to improve adolescent wellbeing through evidence-based health practices.

Association of parents' work-related stress and children's socioemotional competency: Indirect effects of family mealtimes.

Family mealtimes play an important role in promoting the physical and psychological well-being of children. However, parents' work-related stress may impact their ability to participate in frequent family mealtimes. In dual-earner families, gendered norms may also influence parents' shared responsibility to participate in mealtimes with their children. Prior studies have primarily focused on the mother's role in feeding children, while the father's participation has been relatively unexplored. We used a sample of dual-earner families consisting of heterosexual married couples with children in the United States who participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort to investigate how stressors at work may affect the mother's and father's participation in family mealtimes and, in turn, related to the child's socioemotional development. We tested the associations between the mother's and father's work-related stress on the child's socioemotional competency from age two through preschool (age 4-5). We examined the direct and indirect effects of parents' work-related stress on child socioemotional competency through their involvement in mealtimes. The results indicate a negative direct association between the mother's job/financial dissatisfaction and the child's socioemotional competency. The father's job dissatisfaction had an adverse impact on children in terms of socioemotional competency, partially explained by the father participating less often in family mealtimes. Fathers' job/financial dissatisfaction had a negative influence on children's socioemotional competency, even with an increase in the mothers' participation in family mealtimes in the absence of the fathers. The findings emphasize the importance of fathers' involvement in mealtimes above and beyond mothers' involvement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Computational signatures of inequity aversion in children across seven societies.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General on Aug 10 2023 (see record 2023-96713-001). In the original article, there were affiliation errors for the first and 14th authors. The affiliations for Dorsa Amir are Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley; and Department of Psychology, Boston College. The affiliation for Katherine McAuliffe is Department of Psychology, Boston College. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Inequity aversion is an important factor in fairness behavior. Previous work suggests that children show more cross-cultural variation in their willingness to reject allocations that would give them more rewards than their partner-advantageous inequity-as opposed to allocations that would give them less than their partner-disadvantageous inequity. However, as past work has relied solely on children's decisions to accept or reject these offers, the algorithms underlying this pattern of variation remain unclear. Here, we explore the computational signatures of inequity aversion by applying a computational model of decision-making to data from children (N = 807) who played the Inequity Game across seven societies. Specifically, we used drift-diffusion models to formally distinguish evaluative processing (i.e., the computation of the subjective value of accepting or rejecting inequity) from alternative factors such as decision speed and response strategies. Our results suggest that variation in the development of inequity aversion across societies is best accounted for by variation in the drift rate-the direction and strength of the evaluative preference. Our findings underscore the utility of looking beyond decision data to better understand behavioral diversity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Fathers' marital conflict and children's socioemotional skills: A moderated-mediation model of conflict resolution and parenting.

Marital conflict is common in many families. The effects of marital conflict may often spill over to parent-child dyads and affect children's development via their parenting practices. However, couples handle their marital conflict in different ways, and conflict resolution strategies may play a role in children's outcomes. Although mother-reported marital conflict has been a primary focus in most prior studies, little is known about fathers' perspectives. To that end, we examined the mediating effect of fathers' parenting in the association between the frequency of marital conflict and mother-reported children's socioemotional skills in preschool, as well as the moderating role of father constructive conflict resolution frequency in the association between father reports of the frequency of the marital conflict and parenting. Results indicate that father parenting warmth and parenting stress mediated the association between the frequency of marital conflict and children's socioemotional skills. We also found that father reports of the frequency of the marital conflict was positively associated with involvement and negatively associated with warmth at higher levels of constructive conflict resolution frequency. Fathers who reported higher constructive conflict resolution frequency showed higher father involvement and warmth. Finally, the moderated-mediation analysis revealed that, after accounting for mothers' parenting variables, father warmth was the moderated mediator, such that there was a negative indirect effect between the frequency of marital conflict and children's socioemotional skills through father warmth at average and higher levels of constructive conflict resolution frequency. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Development of adiposity among Ju/'Hoansi Hunter-Gatherers.

OBJECTIVES: To characterize the development of childhood adiposity among the Ju'/Hoansi, a well-known hunter-gather group, to compare our results to U.S. references and to recently published results from Savanna Pume' foragers of Venezuela, with the goal of expanding our understanding of adipose development among human hunter-gatherers. METHODS: Triceps, subscapular, and abdominal skinfolds, along with height and weight from ~120 Ju'/Hoansi girls and ~103 boys, ages 0 to 24 years, collected in 1967-1969 were analyzed using best-fit polynomial models and penalized spines to characterize age-specific patterns of adiposity and their relationship to changes in height and weight. RESULTS: Overall, Ju/'Hoansi boys and girls exhibit small skinfolds with a decline in adiposity from 3 to 10 years, with no consistent differences among the three skinfolds. Increases in adiposity during adolescence precede peak height and weight velocities. Adiposity declines during young adulthood for girls and remains largely constant for boys. DISCUSSION: Compared to U.S. standards, the Ju/'Hoansi show a strikingly different pattern of adipose development, including the lack of an adiposity rebound at the onset of middle childhood, and clear increases in adiposity only at adolescence. These findings are consistent with published results from the Savanna Pumé hunter-gatherers of Venezuela, a group with a very different selective history, suggesting that the adiposity rebound does not characterize hunter-gathering populations more generally. Similar analyses in other subsistence populations are called for to confirm our results, and help distinguish the impact of specific environmental and dietary factors on adipose development.

Sleep deprivation among adolescents in urban and indigenous-rural Mexican communities.

Comparing the nature of adolescent sleep across urban and more isolated, rural settings through an ecological, cross-cultural perspective represents one way to inform sleep nuances and broaden our understanding of human development, wellbeing and evolution. Here we tested the Social Jetlag Hypothesis, according to which contemporary, urban lifestyles and technological advances are associated with sleep insufficiency in adolescents. We documented the adolescent sleep duration (11-16 years old; X̅ = 13.7 ± 1.21; n = 145) in two small agricultural, indigenous and one densely urban context in Mexico to investigate whether adolescents in socio-ecologically distinct locations experience sleep deprivation. Sleep data was assembled with actigraphy, sleep diaries and standardized questionnaires. We employed multilevel models to analyze how distinct biological and socio-cultural factors (i.e., pubertal maturation, chronotype, napping, gender, working/schooling, access to screen-based devices, exposure to light, and social sleep practices) shape adolescent sleep duration. Results suggest that the prevalence of adolescent short sleep quotas is similar in rural, more traditional environments compared to highly urbanized societies, and highlight the influence of social activities on the expression of human sleep. This study challenges current assumptions about natural sleep and how adolescents slept before contemporary technological changes occurred.

Kin networks and opportunities for reproductive cooperation and conflict among hunter-gatherers.

Little is known about the potential for reproductive conflict among hunter-gatherer populations, who are characterized by bilateral kinship ties, flexible residential mobility, and high offspring mortality. To assess the potential for reproductive conflict, we use longitudinal residence and reproductive history data for two bands of South American foragers. Using multilevel logistic regressions (N = 44 women, N = 712 person years), we examine how yearly measures of (i) camp composition, (ii) distribution of female kin and (iii) a woman's position in a female kinship network impact the likelihood of giving birth or experiencing a child's death. We compare conflict models to a demographic model that accounts for the proportion of women giving birth in a given year. Contrary to conflict models, results show that the odds of giving birth increase with the presence of highly related women. However, the odds of experiencing an offspring death are insensitive to the presence of coresident women. Network measures of closeness and centrality in the female kin network also show no significant effect on reproductive outcomes. Furthermore, chances of both births and deaths increase in years when proportionally more women are giving birth. We argue that demographic stochasticity relating to ecological conditions best predicts reproductive outcomes for women. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives'.

Female cooperation: evolutionary, cross-cultural and ethnographic evidence.

Women and girls cooperate with each other across many domains and at many scales. However, much of this information is buried in the ethnographic record and has been overlooked in theoretic constructions of the evolution of human sociality and cooperation. The assumed primacy of male bonding, hunting, patrilocality and philopatry has dominated the discussion of cooperation without balanced consideration. A closer look at the ethnographic record reveals that in addition to cooperative childcare and food production, women and girls collectively form coalitions, have their own cooperative political, ceremonial, economic and social institutions, and develop female-based exchange and support networks. The numerous ethnographic examples of female cooperation urge reconsideration of gender stereotypes and the limits of female cooperation. This review brings together theoretic, cross-cultural and cross-lifespan research on female cooperation to present a more even and empirically supported view of female sociality. Following the lead from trends in evolutionary biology and sexual selection theory, the hope going forward is that the focus shifts from rote characterizations of sex differences to highlighting sources of variation and conditions that enhance or constrain female cooperative engagement. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives'.

New perspectives on the evolution of women's cooperation.

A holistic, evolutionary framework about human cooperation must incorporate information about women's cooperative behaviour. Yet, most empirical research on human cooperation has centered on men's behaviour or been derived from experimental studies conducted in western, industrialized populations. These bodies of data are unlikely to accurately represent human behavioural diversity. To address this gap and provide a more balanced view of human cooperation, this issue presents substantial new data and multi-disciplinary perspectives to document the complexity of women's cooperative behaviour. Research in this issue 1) challenges narratives about universal gender differences in cooperation, 2) reconsiders patrilocality and access to kin as constraints on women's cooperation, 3) reviews evidence for a connection between social support and women's health and 4) examines the phylogenetic roots of female cooperation. Here, we discuss the steps taken in this issue toward a more complete and evidence-based understanding of the role that cooperation plays in women's and girls' lives and in building human sociality. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives'.

Adult sex ratios: causes of variation and implications for animal and human societies.

Converging lines of inquiry from across the social and biological sciences target the adult sex ratio (ASR; the proportion of males in the adult population) as a fundamental population-level determinant of behavior. The ASR, which indicates the relative number of potential mates to competitors in a population, frames the selective arena for competition, mate choice, and social interactions. Here we review a growing literature, focusing on methodological developments that sharpen knowledge of the demographic variables underlying ASR variation, experiments that enhance understanding of the consequences of ASR imbalance across societies, and phylogenetic analyses that provide novel insights into social evolution. We additionally highlight areas where research advances are expected to make accelerating contributions across the social sciences, evolutionary biology, and biodiversity conservation.

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

A key issue distinguishing prominent evolutionary models of human life history is whether prolonged childhood evolved to facilitate learning in a skill- and strength-intensive foraging niche requiring high levels of cooperation. Considering the diversity of environments humans inhabit, children's activities should also reflect local social and ecological opportunities and constraints. To better understand our species' developmental plasticity, the present paper compiled a time allocation dataset for children and adolescents from twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence forager societies (n = 690; 3-18 years; 52% girls). We investigated how environmental factors, local ecological risk, and men and women's relative energetic contributions were associated with cross-cultural variation in child and adolescent time allocation to childcare, food production, domestic work, and play. Annual precipitation, annual mean temperature, and net primary productivity were not strongly associated with child and adolescent activity budgets. Increased risk of encounters with dangerous animals and dehydration negatively predicted time allocation to childcare and domestic work, but not food production. Gender differences in child and adolescent activity budgets were stronger in societies where men made greater direct contributions to food production than women. We interpret these findings as suggesting that children and their caregivers adjust their activities to facilitate the early acquisition of knowledge which helps children safely cooperate with adults in a range of social and ecological environments. These findings compel us to consider how childhood may have also evolved to facilitate flexible participation in productive activities in early life.

Sex differences in adipose development in a hunter-gatherer population.

OBJECTIVE: Humans are unusually sexually dimorphic in body composition, with adult females having on average nearly twice the fat mass as males. The development of adipose sex differences has been well characterized for children growing up in food-abundant environments, with less known about cross-cultural variation, particularly in populations without exposure to market foods, mechanized technologies, schooling, vaccination, or other medical interventions. METHODS: To add to the existing cross-cultural data, we fit multiple growth curves to body composition and anthropometric data to describe adipose development for the Savanna Pumé, South American hunter-gatherers. RESULTS: (1) Little evidence is found for an adiposity 'rebound' at the end of early childhood among either Savanna Pumé girls or boys. (2) Rather, fat deposition fluctuates during childhood, from age ~4 to ~9 years, with no appreciable accumulation until the onset of puberty, a pattern also observed among Congo Baka hunter-gatherers. (3) Body fat fluctuations are more pronounced for girls than boys. (4) The age of peak skeletal, weight, and adipose gains are staggered to a much greater extent among the Savanna Pumé compared to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) reference, suggesting this is an important developmental strategy in lean populations. CONCLUSION: Documenting growth patterns under diverse preindustrial energetic conditions provides an important baseline for understanding sex differences in body fat emerging today under food abundance.

Balancing fertility and livelihood diversity in mixed economies.

Mixed economies provide a unique context for testing theories of fertility change. Because they have a stake in two traditions, mixed-economy households balance the demands of both a labor-based subsistence economy, which benefits from a large family, and a wage-labor economy, which benefits from reduced fertility. Additionally, household size changes over the course of its life-cycle and shapes available economic opportunities. Here we argue that in mixed economies, fertility may reflect opportunities for livelihood diversity rather than simply responding to the restricted socioeconomic benefits of small families. While low fertility may in some cases have an economic benefit, low fertility can also limit the livelihood diversity of a household which is a key strategy for long-term economic success. We test this prediction with longitudinal data from a Maya community undergoing both a sustained decline in fertility and rapid integration into the market economy. Using household-level fertility, number of adults, and livelihood diversity at two time points, we find that household size is positively related to livelihood diversity, which in turn is positively related to household income per-capita. However, household size also has a negative association with income per capita. The results reflect a balancing act whereby households attempt to maximize the economic diversity with as few members as possible. Broadly, these results suggest that theories of fertility decline must account for how households pool resources and diversify economic activities in the face of increasing market integration, treating fertility as both an outcome and an input into economic and reproductive decision-making.

Childhood Teaching and Learning among Savanna Pumé Hunter-Gatherers : Mismatch between Foraging and Postindustrial Societies.

Research in nonindustrial small-scale societies challenges the common perception that human childhood is universally characterized by a long period of intensive adult investment and dedicated instruction. Using return rate and time allocation data for the Savanna Pumé, a group of South American hunter-gatherers, age patterns in how children learn to become productive foragers and from whom they learn are observed across the transition from childhood to adolescence. Results show that Savanna Pumé children care for their siblings, are important economic contributors, learn by doing rather than by instruction, and spend their time principally in the company of other children. This developmental experience contrasts with that of children in postindustrial societies, who are dependent on adults, often well past maturity; learn in formal settings; and spend much of their time in the company of adults. These differences raise questions about whether normative behaviors observed in postindustrial societies are representative of human children. This comparison also identifies the potential mismatch between hunter-gatherer and postindustrial societies in the extent to which children may be well adapted to learn from and teach each other. In particular, spending time in autonomous work and play groups develops the cooperation and coordination skills that are foundational to human subsistence and growing up to be socially and productively adept adults and parents.

Effects of family planning on fertility behaviour across the demographic transition.

The adoption of contraception often coincides with market integration and has transformative effects on fertility behavior. Yet many parents in small-scale societies make decisions about whether and when to adopt family planning in an environment where the payoffs to  have smaller families are uncertain. Here we track the fertility of Maya women across 90 years, spanning the transition from natural to contracepting fertility. We first situate the uncertainty in which fertility decisions are made and model how childbearing behaviors respond. We find that contraception, a key factor in cultural transmission models of fertility decline, initially has little effect on family size as women appear to hedge their bets and adopt fertility control only at the end of their reproductive careers. Family planning is, however, associated with the spread of lower fertility in later cohorts. Distinguishing influences on the origin versus spread of a behaviour provides valuable insight into causal factors shaping individual and normative changes in fertility.

How can evolutionary and biological anthropologists engage broader audiences?

OBJECTIVES: With our diverse training, theoretical and empirical toolkits, and rich data, evolutionary and biological anthropologists (EBAs) have much to contribute to research and policy decisions about climate change and other pressing social issues. However, we remain largely absent from these critical, ongoing efforts. Here, we draw on the literature and our own experiences to make recommendations for how EBAs can engage broader audiences, including the communities with whom we collaborate, a more diverse population of students, researchers in other disciplines and the development sector, policymakers, and the general public. These recommendations include: (1) playing to our strength in longitudinal, place-based research, (2) collaborating more broadly, (3) engaging in greater public communication of science, (4) aligning our work with open-science practices to the extent possible, and (5) increasing diversity of our field and teams through intentional action, outreach, training, and mentorship. CONCLUSIONS: We EBAs need to put ourselves out there: research and engagement are complementary, not opposed to each other. With the resources and workable examples we provide here, we hope to spur more EBAs to action.