Religious Involvement Is Associated With Higher Fertility and Lower Maternal Investment, but More Alloparental Support Among Gambian Mothers.
Alloparenting
The Gambia
fertility
parental investment
religion
Journal
American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council
ISSN: 1520-6300
Titre abrégé: Am J Hum Biol
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 8915029
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
19 Aug 2024
19 Aug 2024
Historique:
revised:
22
07
2024
received:
11
01
2024
accepted:
25
07
2024
medline:
20
8
2024
pubmed:
20
8
2024
entrez:
20
8
2024
Statut:
aheadofprint
Résumé
Human 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. We 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. Religiosity 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. These 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.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e24144Subventions
Organisme : John Templeton Foundation
ID : 61426
Organisme : John Templeton Foundation
ID : 62773
Organisme : Templeton Religion Trust
ID : TRT-2022-30378
Informations de copyright
© 2024 The Author(s). American Journal of Human Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
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