Project summary: Across cultures, people who self-identify as religious tend to have more children than their secular counterparts, yet we have little understanding of how religion impacts the number of children people have or their children’s health and educational outcomes. Moreover, processes of modernization greatly affect fertility, but it is unclear how these processes interact with religion’s influence on reproductive decision-making and child success. To address these issues our team collected data on reproductive decisions and child investments in Bangladesh, India, The Gambia, Malawi, and the United States.

Funding: John Templeton Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust

Publications:

In Press	Hassan, Anushe, Laure Spake, John H. Shaver, Mary K. Shenk, Richard Sosis, and Rebecca Sear. Nuclearization of mothers’ social support networks and childcare provision in the UK and the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social Sciences and Humanities Open.
In Press	Spake, Laure, Susan Schaffnit, Abigail Page, Anushe Hassan, Robert Lynch, Joseph Watts, Richard Sosis, Rebecca Sear, Mary K. Shenk, and John H. Shaver. Religious women receive more allomaternal support from non-partner kin in two low-fertility countries. Evolution and Human Behavior.
2024	Spake, L., Hassan, A., Schaffnit, S. B., Alam, N., Amoah, A. S., Badjie, J., Cerami, C., Crampin, A., Dube, A., Kaye, M.P., Kitch, R., Liew, F., McLean, E., Munthali-Mkandawire, S., Mwalwanda, L., Petersen, AC., Prentice, A.M., Zohora, F.T., Watts, J., Sear, R., Shenk, M.K., Sosis, R., and Shaver, J.H. A practical guide to cross-cultural data collection in the biological and behavioural sciences. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 291: 20231422.
2023	Schaffnit, S.B., R. Lynch, L. Spake, R. Sear, R. Sosis, J. Shaver, N. Alam, M. Towner, and M. Shenk. The impact of market integration on arranged marriages in Matlab, Bangladesh. Evolutionary Human Sciences 5, e5: 1-19.
2022	Lynch, R., S. Schaffnit, R. Sear, R. Sosis, J. Shaver, N. Alam, T. Blumenfield, S. Mattison, and M. Shenk. Religiosity is associated with greater size, kin density, and geographic dispersal of women’s social networks in Bangladesh. Scientific Reports 12: 18780.
2021	Spake, Laure, Susan Schaffnit, Rebecca Sear, Mary Shenk, Richard Sosis, and John Shaver. Mother’s partnership status and allomothering networks in the United Kingdom and United States. Social Sciences. 10: 182. doi.org/10.3390/socsci10050182
2021	Shenk, Mary, Siobhan Mattison, Rebecca Sear, Nural Alam, Rubhana Raqib, Anjan Kumar, Farjana Haque, Tami Blumenfield, John, Shaver, Richard Sosis, and Katherine Wander. 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 B. 376: 20200027.
2020	Shaver, John, Eleanor Power, Benjamin Purzycki, Joseph Watts, Rebecca Sear, Mary Shenk Richard Sosis, Joseph Bulbulia. Church attendance and alloparenting: an analysis of fertility, social support, and child development among English mothers. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 375: 20190428.
2019	Shaver, John, Chris Sibley, Richard Sosis, Dean Galbraith, and Joseph Bulbulia. Alloparenting and Religious Fertility: A Test of the Religious Alloparenting Hypothesis. Evolution and Human Behavior 40: 315-324.