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

在教师早期职业发展（CAREER）奖的支持下，考特尼米汉博士（华盛顿州立大学）将进行为期五年的跨文化研究，探讨合作育儿对儿童发展和健康的影响。由于人类依赖儿童的强度和长度以及人类生育间隔的短暂性，人类母亲往往必须同时抚养多个受抚养的儿童。因此，很可能在整个进化史中，非母亲的照顾对于成功的繁殖是必要的。然而，尽管最近的兴趣合作育儿及其对人类童年和家庭组织的演变的影响，很少有研究还捕捉人类育儿系统的复杂性。为了填补这一空白，米汉将在两个对比鲜明的社会群体中进行纵向实地研究，以检验人类育儿系统比以前的研究人员所描述的更灵活的假设;多个非孕产妇个体对儿童的需求敏感并做出反应;非孕产妇照顾者的参与对儿童的成功发展是必要的。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投资，她和她的团队将收集儿童和母亲资源交换的定量行为观察。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，以跟踪五年内的家庭健康和儿童发展。这些定量数据将与人种学调查相补充，以记录儿童发展和儿童养育方面的文化差异。这项研究很重要，因为它将提供数据，以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，以及儿童的生长和发展，这些研究领域继续被西方社会的数据所主导。该项目旨在评估儿童养育系统的广度、多样性和动态性。此外，该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。教育活动包括在课堂和实验室的培训，推广到代表性不足和本科生，在现场体验学生培训，并积极学生研究人员的合作。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.