Abstract
This thesis examines the impact of alloparenting by children in Samoa. Survey data was used to explore whether children’s help in the household (“alloparental care”) influenced female fertility. I showed that children’s help had positive effects on both number of offspring and interbirth interval, but there was no influence of the sex of the first-born offspring; that is, having first-born daughters as potential helpers did not boost female reproduction compared to first-born sons. Building on this finding, I present ethological data on daily activities (including allocare) observed in twenty-five Samoan households in a single village. Contrary to received wisdom, these data showed that a division of labour by sex is not evident in children under the age of fifteen. I suggest this explains the lack of an effect of offspring sex. Finally, understanding the necessity of ecologically valid measures is explored through a series of open-ended interviews with Samoan women.
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Authors
-
- Forrester, Deanna Lee
- University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science
Subjects
dc:subject × 16- Child caregivers -- Samoa
- Kinship care -- Samoa
- Child rearing -- Samoa
- Brothers and sisters -- Samoa
- Samoa -- Social life and customs
- Families -- Samoa
- Fertility, Human -- Research -- Samoa
- Fertility, Human -- Social aspects -- Samoa
- alloparenting by children
- female fertility
- allocare
- sibling alloparenting
- childhood division of labour
- sex of first-born
- fertility rate
- Dissertations, Academic
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Identifier
- hdl:10133/5712
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:opus.uleth.ca:10133/5712