ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Children are important too: juvenile playgroups and maternal childcare in a foraging population, the Agta.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed.
- Human Life History is Shaping Embodied Medicinal Plant Knowledge Across the Lifespan.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Demography of grandmothering: a case study in Agta foragers.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Collecting real-time infant feeding and support experience: co-participatory pilot study of mobile health methodology.International breastfeeding journal · 2025Article
- Children's Caregiving and Growth in Northwestern Tanzania: Limited Evidence That Support From Specific Caregivers Is Associated With Better Growth.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Patterns of physical activity in hunter-gatherer children compared with US and UK children.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- BaYaka mothers balance childcare and subsistence tasks during collaborative foraging in Congo Basin.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Hunter-Gatherer children's close-proximity networks: Similarities and differences with cooperative and communal breeding systems.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Lonely, stressed-out moms: Does the postindustrial social experience put women at risk for perinatal mood disorders?Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Review
- Adoption, Fostering, and Parental Absence in Vanuatu.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Post-marital residence patterns and the timing of reproduction: evidence from a matrilineal society.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- New perspectives on the evolution of women's cooperation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Sedentarization and maternal childcare networks: role of risk, gender and demography.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Repercussions of patrilocal residence on mothers' social support networks among Tsimane forager-farmers.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Cooperation and partner choice among Agta hunter-gatherer children: An evolutionary developmental perspective.PloS one · 2023Article
- Girls in early childhood increase food returns of nursing women during subsistence activities of the BaYaka in the Republic of Congo.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Socioecology shapes child and adolescent time allocation in twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence forager societies.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Testing the buffering hypothesis: Breastfeeding problems, cessation, and social support in the UK.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2022Article
- The origins of human cumulative culture: from the foraging niche to collective intelligence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Rates of ecological knowledge learning in Pemba, Tanzania: Implications for childhood evolution.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Social support, nutrition and health among women in rural Bangladesh: complex tradeoffs in allocare, kin proximity and support network size.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
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7 authors.
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Abstract
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. Children-only playgroups consistently predicted a decrease in maternal childcare. While grandmothers were rarely available, their presence was negatively associated with maternal presence and childcare, and grandmothers performed similar childcare activities to mothers. These results underscore the importance of allomothering in reducing maternal childcare in the Agta. Our findings suggest that flexibility in childcare sources, including children-only playgroups, may have been the key to human life-history evolution. Overall, our results reinforce the necessity of a broad conceptualization of social support in human childcare. This article is part of the theme issue 'Multidisciplinary perspectives on social support and maternal-child health'.
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