CAREER: Cooperative Child Rearing and Health among Central African Foragers and Farmers

在学院早期职业发展(Career)奖的支持下，Courtney Meehan博士(华盛顿州立大学)将进行一项为期五年的跨文化研究，研究合作托儿对儿童发展和健康的影响。由于人类对儿童依赖的强度和持续时间，以及人类分娩间隔的短时间，人类母亲往往必须同时供养多个被依赖的儿童。因此，很可能在整个进化史中，非母体照料对于成功繁殖是必要的。然而，尽管最近人们对合作育儿及其对人类童年和家庭组织进化的影响感兴趣，但很少有研究能够捕捉到人类育儿系统的复杂性。为了填补这一空白，米汉将在两个截然不同的社会群体中进行纵向实地研究，以检验以下假设：人类育儿系统比之前的研究人员描述的更灵活；多个非母性个体对儿童需求敏感并做出反应；以及非母性照顾者的参与对于成功的儿童发展是必要的。实地研究将在中非共和国的Aka森林采集者和Ngandu农民中进行。为了记录儿童的社交网络和非母亲的投资，她和她的团队将收集儿童的量化行为观察和母亲的资源交换。为了探索非母亲参与的影响，他们将进行儿童和家庭健康检查，以跟踪五年期间的家庭健康和儿童发展。这些量化数据将与人种学调查相辅相成，以记录儿童发展和儿童养育中的文化差异。这项研究之所以重要，是因为它将提供数据，探索合作育儿对人类童年和家庭的进化影响，并将大大有助于我们理解儿童的跨文化模式，以及儿童成长和发展，这一研究领域仍然由西方社会的数据主导。该项目旨在评估儿童养育系统的广度、多样性和动态性质。此外，这个项目有一个重要的教育组成部分，将培养不同的研究生和本科生。教育活动包括课堂和实验室培训、面向人数不足的本科生和本科生的外联、实地体验式学生培训以及积极的学生与研究人员合作。资助这项研究还促进了国际能力建设以及与中非共和国班吉大学的学生和研究人员的合作。

With the support of a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, Dr. Courtney Meehan (Washington State University) will undertake a five-year cross-cultural study of the effects of cooperative childcare on child development and health. Because of the intensity and length of human child dependency and the shortness of human birth intervals, human mothers often must provide for multiple dependent children simultaneously. Thus it is likely that throughout evolutionary history, non-maternal care has been necessary for successful reproduction. However, despite recent interest in cooperative childrearing and its implications for the evolution of human childhood and family organization, few studies yet capture the complexity of human childrearing systems. To fill this gap, Meehan will conduct longitudinal field research in two contrasting social groups to test the hypotheses that human childrearing systems are more flexible than described by previous researchers; that multiple non-maternal individuals are sensitive to and respond to child needs; and that the involvement of nonmaternal caretakers is necessary for successful child development. The field research will be conducted in the Central African Republic among Aka forest foragers and Ngandu farmers. To document children's social networks and non-maternal investment, she and her team will collect quantitative behavioral observations of children and maternal resource exchanges. To explore the effects of non-maternal involvement, they will perform child and family wellness exams to track family health and child development over the five-year period. These quantitative data will be complemented with ethnographic investigations to document cultural variation in child development and child rearing.This research is important because it will provide data to explore the evolutionary implications of cooperative childrearing for human childhood and families, and will contribute substantially to our understanding of cross-cultural patterns of childhood, and child growth and development, research areas that continue to be dominated by data on Western societies. This project is designed to assess the breadth, diversity, and dynamic nature of childrearing systems. In addition, this project has a significant educational component that will train a diverse body of graduate and undergraduate students. Educational activities include training in the classroom and lab, outreach to underrepresented and undergraduate students, experiential student training in the field, and active student-researcher collaboration. Funding this research also fosters international capacity building and collaboration with students and researchers at the University of Bangui in the Central African Republic.