Doctoral Dissertation Research: Constraint in Marriage Systems and Fitness Outcomes

一个人选择谁作为伴侣，会对获得资源、社会支持、健康和福祉产生巨大影响。解释哪些特征被怀疑是最令人向往的理论比比皆是，但有限的研究探索了一个人选择谁作为生育伴侣的限制性决策的后果。尽管合作伙伴的选择在许多情况下都受到限制，但这一点仍然存在。这项研究试图了解限制性决策对伴侣选择的影响以及对健康和福祉的相关影响。这项工作将培养一名科学文化人类学研究生，并将为有关人类生殖系统变异的原因和后果的辩论提供相关见解。对婚姻制度的回顾表明，结婚的人通常喜欢不同的伴侣，而不是从内婚制社会网络中挑选出来的伴侣。然而，这种不和谐的影响并没有得到很好的研究。这项研究将在这样一个社区进行，在这个社区里，大约一半的婚姻涉及受限制的伴侣选择，另一半涉及伴侣自由选择的婚姻。这项研究利用这种比较提出了几个关于限制繁殖的后果的重要问题。特别是，研究人员调查了受约束的婚姻和非受约束的婚姻是否会产生更多或更健康的孩子。为了了解这些关系，这项研究将衡量婚姻满意度、出生率、儿童存活率和生长率、儿童健康，以及父母在这两种类型婚姻中的实际贡献，最终目的是了解不受约束的伴侣选择可能带来的好处。这些发现与公共卫生问题越来越相关，特别是在科学家努力理解其他损害伴侣选择机制的过程的作用的情况下，包括其他形式的医疗辅助生殖。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Whom one selects as a partner has enormous consequences on access to resources, social support, health, and well-being. Theories abound explaining which traits are suspected to be the most desirable, yet limited research explores the consequences of constrained decision-making on whom one selects as a reproductive partner. This is despite the fact that partner choice is constrained in numerous contexts. This study seeks to understand the effects of constrained decision-making on partner choice and associated effects on health and well-being. The work will train a graduate student in scientific cultural anthropology and will provide insights relevant to debates about the causes and consequences of variation in human reproductive systems. A review of marriage systems indicates that the marrying individuals generally prefer different partners than those selected from within endogamous social networks. The effects of this discordance are not well studied, however. This study will be conducted in a community where roughly half of marriages involve constrained partner choice and half involve marriages in which partners are freely chosen. The research leverages this comparison to ask several important questions about the consequences of constrained reproduction. In particular, the researchers investigate whether more or healthier children result from in constrained versus unconstrained marriage. To understand these relationships, this study will measure marriage satisfaction, birth rates, child survival and growth rates, and child health, as well as material parental contributions in both types of marriages, with the ultimate goal of understanding what benefits unconstrained partner choice might provide. These findings are increasingly relevant to public health issues, especially as scientists struggle to understand the role of other processes that compromise partner-choice mechanisms, including other forms of medically assisted reproduction.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.