Doctoral Dissertation Research: Constraint in Marriage Systems and Fitness Outcomes

选择谁作为伴侣对获得资源、社会支持、健康和福祉有着巨大的影响。有很多理论可以解释哪些特征被认为是最理想的，但有限的研究探讨了选择谁作为生育伴侣的限制性决策的后果。尽管伴侣的选择在很多情况下都是受限的。本研究旨在了解约束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的研究生，并将为有关人类生殖系统变异的原因和后果的辩论提供见解。对婚姻制度的回顾表明，结婚的个体通常比从内婚制社会网络中选择的伴侣更喜欢不同的伴侣。然而，这种不一致的影响还没有得到很好的研究。这项研究将在一个社区中进行，其中大约一半的婚姻涉及限制性伴侣选择，一半涉及自由选择伴侣的婚姻。这项研究利用这种比较，提出了几个关于限制生育后果的重要问题。研究人员特别调查了受约束婚姻与不受约束婚姻是否会产生更多或更健康的孩子。为了理解这些关系，本研究将测量婚姻满意度、出生率、儿童存活率和生长率、儿童健康，以及两种婚姻中父母的物质贡献，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的关系日益密切，特别是在科学家们努力了解其他损害伴侣选择机制的过程的作用时，包括其他形式的医学辅助生殖。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.