Girls in Early Childhood Increase Foodreturns of Nursing Women Duringsubsistence Activities of the Bayakain the Republic of Congo

Nursing mothers face an energetic trade-off between infant care and work.Under pooled energy budgets, this trade-off can be reduced by assistancein food acquisition and infant care tasks from non-maternal carers. Acrosscultures, children also often provide infant care. Yet the question of whohelps nursing mothers during foraging has been understudied, especiallythe role of children. Using focal follow data from 140 subsistence expeditionsby BaYaka women in the Republic of Congo, we investigated how potentialsupport from carers increased mothers’foraging productivity. We found thatthe number of girls in early childhood (ages 4–7 years) in subsistence groupsincreased food returns of nursing women with infants (kcal collected perminute). This effect was stronger than that of other adult women, andolder girls in middle childhood (ages 8–13 years) and adolescence (ages14–19 years). Child helpers were not necessarily genetically related to nur-sing women. Our results suggest that it is young girls who provide infantcare while nursing mothers are acquiring food—by holding, monitoringand playing with infants—and, thus, that they also contribute to theenergy pool of the community during women’s subsistence activities. Ourstudy highlights the critical role of children as carers from early childhood.

Publication: Haneul Jang, et al., Girls in early childhood increase food returns of nursing women during subsistence activities of the BaYaka in the Republic of Congo, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1407

Original Story Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology