Re-examining the adaptive function of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.

Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (NVP) have been proposed to have a prophylactic function. In this review, I re-examine NVP from an evolutionary perspective in light of new research on NVP. First, current evidence suggests that the observed characteristics of NVP does not align well with a prophylactic function.

Adoption, Fostering, and Parental Absence in Vanuatu.

Alloparenting, wherein people provide care to children who are not their biological offspring, is a key aspect of human child-rearing. In the Pacific, many children are adopted or fostered by custodial alloparents even when both biological parents are still alive. From a behavioral ecology perspective, such behaviors are puzzling: why parent someone else's child at your expense? Furthermore, little is known about how these arrangements are made in Pacific Islander societies today, who provides care, and what kinds of outcomes fostered children experience.

The impact of COVID-19 lockdown on postpartum mothers in London, England: An online focus group study.

Aims: This study examines the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on postpartum mothers in England, with the aim of identifying opportunities to improve maternal experience and wellbeing. The postpartum/postnatal period is widely acknowledged as a time when mothers require greater levels of support from multiple sources. However, stay-at-home orders, commonly known as "lockdown," deployed in some countries to limit COVID-19 transmission reduced access to support.

Development of teaching in ni-Vanuatu children.

Teaching is an important mechanism of social learning. In industrialized societies, 3-year-olds tend to teach through demonstrations and short commands, while 5-year-olds use more verbal communication and abstract explanations. However, it remains unclear whether this generalizes to other cultures.

Why the Son-bias in Caregiving? Testing Sex-differences in the Associations Between Paternal Caregiving and Child Outcomes in England.

Studies show that fathers across Western populations tend to provide more care to sons than daughters. Following a human behavioral ecological framework, we hypothesize that son-biases in fathering may (at least in part) be due to differences in fitness returns to paternal direct investments by child's sex. In this study, we investigate sex-differences in the associations between paternal caregiving and children's outcomes in stable, two-parent families.

Testing the buffering hypothesis: Breastfeeding problems, cessation, and social support in the UK.

Objectives: Physical breastfeeding problems can lead women to terminate breastfeeding earlier than planned. In high-income countries such as the UK, breastfeeding problems have been attributed to the cultural and individual "inexperience" of breastfeeding, ultimately leading to lower breastfeeding rates. Yet, cross-cultural evidence suggests breastfeeding problems still occur in contexts where breastfeeding is common, prolonged, and seen publicly.

Communication Across Maternal Social Networks During England's First National Lockdown and Its Association With Postnatal Depressive Symptoms.

Postnatal/postpartum depression (PND/PPD) had a pre-COVID-19 estimated prevalence ranging up to 23% in Europe, 33% in Australia, and 64% in America, and is detrimental to both mothers and their infants. Low social support is a key risk factor for developing PND. From an evolutionary perspective this is perhaps unsurprising, as humans evolved as cooperative childrearers, inherently reliant on social support to raise children.

Who cares for women with children? Crossing the bridge between disciplines.

It has long been acknowledged that women with children require social support to promote their health and wellbeing, as well as that of their children. However, the dominant conceptualizations of support have been heavily influenced by Western family norms. The consequence, at best, has been to stifle our understanding of the nature and consequences of support for mothers and children.

Children are important too: juvenile playgroups and maternal childcare in a foraging population, the Agta.

Non-maternal carers (allomothers) are hypothesized to lighten the mother's workload, allowing for the specialized human life history including relatively short interbirth intervals and multiple dependent offspring. Here, using in-depth observational data on childcare provided to 78 Agta children (a foraging population in the northern Philippines; aged 0-6 years), we explore whether allomaternal childcare substitutes and decreases maternal childcare. We found that allomother caregiving was associated with reduced maternal childcare, but the substitutive effect varied depending on the source and type of care.

The relationship between social support, stressful events, and menopause symptoms.

Many women going through the menopausal transition experience vasomotor symptoms (VMS), and research has shown that there is a large amount of variation in their frequency and severity. Many lifestyle factors have been found to co-vary with VMS, including the level of social support received by the woman, and how stressed she is. Stress is well documented to worsen menopause symptoms, and there is some evidence that support eases them; however, there is little research into whether support is an effective buffer against the negative effects of stress on VMS.

How evolutionary behavioural sciences can help us understand behaviour in a pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought science into the public eye and to the attention of governments more than ever before. Much of this attention is on work in epidemiology, virology and public health, with most behavioural advice in public health focusing squarely on 'proximate' determinants of behaviour. While epidemiological models are powerful tools to predict the spread of disease when human behaviour is stable, most do not incorporate behavioural change.

Subjective Environmental Experiences and Women's Breastfeeding Journeys: A Survival Analysis Using an Online Survey of UK Mothers.

Local physical and social environmental factors are important drivers of human health and behaviour. Environmental perception has been linked with both reproduction and parenting, but links between subjective environmental experiences and breastfeeding remain unclear. Using retrospective data from an online survey of UK mothers of children aged 0-24 months, Cox-Aalen survival models test whether negative subjective environmental experiences negatively correlated with any and exclusive breastfeeding (max = 473).

Typologies of postnatal support and breastfeeding at two months in the UK: Response to comments by Harpur & Haddon.

We welcome the comments by Harpur and Haddon (2020) on our paper on the typologies of social support and its associations with breastfeeding at two months in a UK sample. We share their concerns around the under-acknowledged costs of breastfeeding, and the need for a truly family-centred approach to breastfeeding support. However, they are mistaken to assume we do not view breastfeeding problems as an important cost of breastfeeding: We explicitly comment on breastfeeding challenges within our paper, and such challenges are theoretically incorporated into the "costs of breastfeeding" following an evolutionary anthropological framework.

Typologies of postnatal support and breastfeeding at two months in the UK.

There is extensive evidence to suggest that social support improves breastfeeding outcomes. Building on this evidence-base, public health services and interventions aiming to improve breastfeeding rates have primarily targeted informational and emotional support to mothers, reflecting an individual behaviour-change approach. However, mothers exist within a wider social network, and the characteristics of their broader support networks may be an important predictor of breastfeeding outcomes.

Cohort profile: Children in Need Census (CIN) records of children referred for social care support in England.

Purpose: The Children in Need Census (CIN) is a case-based administrative dataset on children referred to social care services in England. CIN includes information on the 'needs' of children, and whether they received social care support. Local and national government bodies in England currently use CIN for evaluation purposes.

Practical Support from Fathers and Grandmothers Is Associated with Lower Levels of Breastfeeding in the UK Millennium Cohort Study.

Mothers face trade-offs between infant care and subsistence/economic activities. In traditional populations, allomothers such as fathers and grandmothers support mothers with young infants, allowing them to reduce labour activities and focus on breastfeeding. Similarly, the positive impact of social support on breastfeeding has been highlighted in developed populations.

Direct investment by stepfathers can mitigate effects on educational outcomes but does not improve behavioural difficulties.

In contemporary developed populations, stepfather presence has been associated with detrimental effects on child development. However, the proximate mechanisms behind such effects are yet to be fully explored. From a behavioural ecological perspective, the negative effects associated with stepfathers may be due to the reduced quantity and quality of investments children receive within stepfather households.