David A Coall

• PhD, BSc(hons), BPsych
• Senior Lecturer Biomedical Science Course Coordinator and Human Biology Major Coordinator at Edith Cowan University

Grandparental childcare is an important form of social support, which may improve the well-being of grandchildren, parents, and grandparents themselves. Prior studies have detected that older adults who provide support to one party are more likely to offer help and care to family and other close ones; however, there is a lack of research on multita...

Background : Research suggests there is considerable opportunity to improve children’s movement behaviors while they are being cared for by their grandparents. An understanding of the extent to which grandparent practices facilitate children’s engagement in physical activity is critical to the development of health interventions targeting grandpare...

Context There is mounting evidence implicating kisspeptin signalling in placental development and function. Aims This study aimed to elucidate kisspeptin’s role in trophoblast invasion and migration using three experimental models. Methods First, we examined the mouse fetus and placenta in a kisspeptin receptor (Kiss1r) knockout (KO) model. Fetal...

Background With an increasing number of grandparents providing care to their grandchildren, calls have been made for these caregivers to be considered important stakeholders in encouraging children’s engagement in health-promoting behaviors, such as physical activity. Understanding the perspectives of grandparents who provide care is crucial to inf...

Human evolutionary demography is an emerging field blending natural science with social science. This edited volume provides a much-needed, interdisciplinary introduction to the field and highlights cutting-edge research for interested readers and researchers in demography, the evolutionary behavioural sciences, biology, and related disciplines. By...

Sexual selection theory predicts that males, especially in their prime reproductive years, are more risk-prone than females. Risk-taking is a means to convey mate quality or “good genes” to members of the opposite sex or competitive ability to members of the same sex. Therefore, risk-taking should be more common in the presence of potential mates (...

The prevalence of divorce in both parental and grandparental generations has led to a rise in the number of children who now have families that include both biological and step-grandparents. Despite the thorough examination of biological grandparents’ contributions in the recent literature, there remains a scarcity of studies focusing on the invest...

Exogenous shocks during sensitive periods of development can have long-lasting effects on adult phenotypes including behavior, survival and reproduction. Cooperative breeding, such as grandparental care in humans and some other mammal species, is believed to have evolved partly in order to cope with challenging environments. Nevertheless, studies a...

Objectives Micronutrients, especially calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) are reported to reduce preeclampsia events via several factors such as endothelial cell control, optimal oxidative stress and a balanced angiogenic growth mediator. We evaluated the association of micronutrients with oxidative stress biomarkers, and angiogenic growth mediators in...

The provision of community-based space for people experiencing a mental health crisis is regarded as a favourable alternative to the emergency department. However, the only non-emergency department safe spaces in Western Australia are located within hospitals or hospital grounds. This qualitative study asked mental health consumers in Western Austr...

Unlabelled: Risk taking is more commonly shown by males than females and has a signalling function, serving to advertise one's intrinsic quality to prospective mates. Previous research has established that male risk takers are judged as more attractive for short-term flings than long-term relationships, but the environmental and socioeconomic cont...

Exogenous shocks during sensitive periods of development can have long-lasting effects on adult phenotypes including behavior, survival and reproduction. Cooperative breeding, such as grandparental care in humans and some other mammal species, is believed to have evolved largely in order to cope with challenging environments. Nevertheless, studies...

Objective The study used both subjective, Suboptimal Health Status (SHS) concept along with objective, biomarkers of oxidative stress (OS): 8-OHdG, 8-epi-PGF2α and total antioxidant capacity (TAC); and angiogenic growth mediators (AGMs): VEGF-A, sFlt-1, PlGF and soluble endoglin (sEng) for predicting early-onset (EO) and late-onset (LO) preeclampsi...

Background Angiogenic growth mediators (AGMs) and oxidative stress (OS) both play essential roles in normal placental vascular development and as such, placental alterations in these factors contribute to pre-eclampsia (PE). Suboptimal health status (SHS), an intermediate between health and disease, has been associated with imbalanced AGMs and OS b...

Evolutionary theory predicts a downward flow of investment from older to younger generations, representing individual efforts to maximize inclusive fitness. Maternal grandparents and maternal grandmothers (MGMs) in particular consistently show the highest levels of investment (e.g. time, care and resources) in their grandchildren. Grandparental inv...

Background Pregnant women, particularly in developing countries are facing a huge burden of preeclampsia (PE) leading to high morbidity and mortality rates. This is due to delayed diagnosis and unrecognised early targeted preventive measures. Adapting innovative solutions via shifting from delayed to early diagnosis of PE in the context of predicti...

Evolutionary theory predicts a downward flow of investments from older to younger generations that represents individuals’ efforts to maximize their inclusive fitness. Maternal grandparents and maternal grandmothers in particular have been consistently found to show the highest investment (e.g., time, care and resources) in their grandchildren. How...

This paper examines methodological issues related to an innovative online qualitative research project that explored ‘safe spaces’ with mental health service users. The project used photovoice and focus groups conducted via Zoom videoconferencing software. Eleven participants shared photographs, discussing their meaning and significance in relation...

Urban living is often thought to promote incivility, but the existing sociological evidence paints a mixed picture. We aimed to examine the urban incivility phenomenon from an evolutionist’s perspective. Small communities are expected to show a higher incidence of helping because the applicability of theories such as kin selection, direct reciproci...

Theory suggests that individuals are more willing to sustain personal costs to benefit ingroup members compared to outgroup members. Real-world tests of parochial attitudes have lagged behind decision-making tasks in controlled settings. We thus explored the validity of the ingroup favoritism argument through a naturalistic helping task that entail...

Altruism is a universal human trait, but little is known about its within-population variation. Socio-economic status (SES) has been found to positively impact altruism, but the specific socio-economic variables behind this relationship have remained elusive. This study aimed to determine which facets of SES predict altruism using a lost letter par...

Optimal oxidative stress (OS) is important throughout pregnancy; however, an increased OS may alter placental angiogenesis culminating in an imbalanced of angiogenic growth mediators (AGMs). Suboptimal Health Status (SHS), a physical state between health and disease, may be associated with increased OS and unbalanced AGMs. In this study, we explore...

This research aimed to investigate grandparents’ perspectives on the impact of Leadership and Respite Camps, designed for children being raised by their grandparents, on their grandchildren. In-depth interviews were conducted with 34 grandparents whose grandchildren had participated in 1 of 3 camps held between September 2018 and January 2019, in P...

There is a consensus in the literature that hunger and community violence inaugurates adverse health impacts for survivors and for their descendants. The studied cohorts do not include Western Australian Aboriginal people, although many experienced violence and famine conditions as late as the 1970s. This article describes the pathways and intergen...

The transition to grandparenthood, that is the birth of the first grandchild, is often assumed to increase the subjective well-being of older adults; however, prior studies are scarce and have provided mixed results. Investigation of the associations between grandparenthood and subjective well-being, measured by self-rated life satisfaction, qualit...

Background: Preeclampsia (PE) is among the leading cause of maternal and foetal morbidity and mortality associated with adverse perinatal complications. The most devastating are pregnant women who are yet to be diagnosed but complain of poor health–suboptimal health status (SHS). For the first time, we explored the usefulness of a SHS questionnaire...

Background Normotensive pregnancy may develop into preeclampsia (PE) and other adverse pregnancy complications (APCs), for which the causes are still unknown. Suboptimal health status (SHS), a physical state between health and disease, might contribute to the development and progression of PE. By integration of a routine health measure in this Ghan...

Previous studies suggest grandparental childcare is associated with improved health and well-being of grandparents but limited information on the causal nature of this association exists. Here, we use the longitudinal Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) of people aged 50 and above across 11 countries including follow-up waves...

Custodial grandparents are a vulnerable and marginalised group within society. A total of 110 custodial grandparents took part in a mixed-method research project. Of these, 22 participated in a semi-structured interview, 27 participated in an interview and completed a Grandcarer Needs, Well-being and Health Survey, and 61 completed a survey only. D...

Father absence in early life has been shown to be associated with accelerated reproductive development in girls. Evolutionary social scientists have proposed several adaptive hypotheses for this finding. Though there is variation in the detail of these hypotheses, they all assume that family environment in early life influences the development of l...

The global reduction in childhood infectious diseases since the 1960s is primarily due to the success of extensive worldwide immunisation campaigns. However, the universal vaccination coverage program appears to have lost momentum in the wake of negative, unfounded claims about the safety of vaccines. While parents of the 21st century have little f...

Father absence in early life is consistently shown to be associated with accelerated reproductive development in girls. Evolutionary social scientists have proposed several adaptive hypotheses for this finding. Though there is variation in the detail of these hypotheses, they all assume that family environment in early life influences the developme...

Why do grandparents invest so heavily in their grandchildren and what impact does this investment have on families? A multitude of factors influence the roles grandparents play in their families. Here, we present an interdisciplinary perspective of grandparenting incorporating theory and research from evolutionary biology, sociology and economics....

Introduction: Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (NVP) are common. Whilst the impact on pregnant women has been well documented, there is less data on the impact on partners. This study evaluated awareness and impact of maternal NVP on expectant fathers. Methods: Observational study of 300 expectant fathers. Institutional ethics approval and consent...

How does helping behavior contribute to the health and the longevity of older helpers? From an evolutionary perspective, the ultimate cause may be rooted in ancestral parenting and grandparenting. These activities may have generalized to a neural and hormonal caregiving system that also enabled prosocial behavior beyond the family. From a psycholog...

In Australia, children removed from the parental home because substance use–related child maltreatment issues are commonly placed in grandparent custodial care; however, the longer term relational costs of this approach have yet to be determined. Conventional, summative, and directive content analyses were conducted on data extracted from 88 Austra...

Custodial grandparenting (i.e. raising grandchildren on a full-time basis) is a global phenomenon. Despite the hardships associated with 24/7 custodial care, grandparents continue to invest in their grandchildren. Why they do so is a matter of much conjecture. For example, it has been posited that grandparents assume custodial care of their grandch...

t: Objective: This study sought to determine what impact the task of raising grandchildren is having on custodial grandparents’ physical health. Design and Methods: Thematic analysis was conducted on interview data collected from 49 custodial grandparents. Results: The task of raising grandchildren on a fixed-income is difficult for grandparents wi...

Parental drug-usage is a risk factor for child neglect. Maternal drug-dependency, in particular, has far reaching implications for the mother, her children, and the grandparents who are left to rear the children when the mother’s drug-dependency prohibits her from doing so. Thus, drug-related maternal incapacity to adequately parent her child/ren p...

Grandparenting has been proposed as an ultimate evolutionary mechanism that has contributed to the increase in human life expectancy (see the grandmother hypothesis). The neural and hormonal system – originally rooted in parenting and thus grandparenting – that is activated in the process of caregiving has been suggested as a potential proximate me...

Introduction: A WA Parliamentary inquiry was conducted following suicides in fly in, fly out (FIFO) workers. It found that there was limited information available about the mental health of FIFO fathers. The aim of this study was to explore rates of anxiety and depression in FIFO fathers across the years of 2013 to 2015, as the WA mining boom was e...

A multitude of factors influence the role a grandfather plays in his family. This chapter presents an interdisciplinary perspective of grandfathering, incorporating research from the fields of evolutionary biology, sociology, economics and psychology. Examples will be used to show how these perspectives complement rather than compete with each othe...

Grandcarers are at-risk of poor mental health outcomes. Current knowledge of the support needs of grandcarers is fragmented. To help fill this knowledge gap qualitative analysis was undertaken on 49 interviews conducted with custodial grandparents. The findings reveal that conflicted occupational roles coupled with the complexity of the stressors f...

Cultural, ecological, familial and physiological factors consistently influence fertility behaviours, however, the proximate psychological mechanisms underlying fertility decisions in humans are poorly understood. Understanding the psychological mechanisms underlying human fertility may illuminate the final processes by which some of these known pr...

Developmental environments are crucial for shaping our life course. Elements of the early social and biological environments have been consistently associated with reproduction in humans. To date, a strong focus has been on the relationship between early stress, earlier menarche and first child birth in women. These associations, found predominatel...

Richerson et al. argue that "cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation." We believe that cooperation came first making culture and thus cultural group selection possible. Cooperation and culture began - and begins - in mother-infant interaction.

Grandparent care of their grandchild/ren ranges in type from no involvement to full-time custodial care. The assumption of custodial care is frequently an unplanned event and can cause a momentary hesitation on the grandparent's behalf given that becoming a custodial grandparent is a retirement plans changing decision. However, in most cases the we...

The Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) is an evidenced-based model of practice that occupational therapists employ to discuss and reflect on the occupational needs of clients. Custodial grandparents are one cohort of potential clients who experience considerable difficulty in adapting to the occupational challenges of their grandchild-rearing role, p...

The purpose of this research was to examine earliest memories in patients with a mental disorder and their clinical relevance to diagnosis and treatment. A semi-structured early memory questionnaire was developed and 50 patients with anxiety, depression or a psychotic disorder were interviewed. A thematic analysis was conducted to extract dominant...

Background: There is limited research on expectant fathers understanding of the physical impact of early pregnancy nausea and vomiting upon their partner despite the significant associated female morbidity. We report on expectant fathers awareness and understanding of the impact of pregnancy-induced nausea and vomiting in their partner’s pregnancy....

The crucial impact prenatal influences have on development has been recognized for millennia. It is now known that the environment experienced during pregnancy influences development in a way that has consequences for physical and mental health throughout life. This burgeoning field of enquiry encapsulates a broad range of disciplines, but until re...

Across human cultures, grandparents make a valued contribution to the health of their families and communities. Moreover, evidence is gathering that grandparents have a positive impact on the development of grandchildren in contemporary industrialized societies. A broad range of factors that influence the likelihood grandparents will invest in thei...

To assess the frequency and characteristics of somatoform disorders in patients with chronic pain. The study took place in the psychiatric outpatient clinic of a rehabilitation hospital. Participants were interviewed using the World Health Organization Somatoform Disorders Schedule (WHO-SDS) version 2.0. Thirty new and 30 current attendees to the c...

Teenage childbearing may have childhood origins and can be viewed as the outcome of a coherent reproductive strategy associated with early environmental conditions. Life-history theory would predict that where futures are uncertain fitness can be maximized through diverting effort from somatic development into reproduction. Even before the childbea...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a consumer satisfaction instrument for its psychometric properties and utility as part of a mental health rehabilitation service's quality improvement strategy. Methods: The instrument was developed and evaluated qualitatively using the Nominal Group Technique and quantitatively using...

Teenage pregnancy is associated with poor maternal and child health outcomes that can resonate throughout individuals' lives and into future generations. Across many industrialised nations, teenage pregnancy rates remain high despite extensive efforts to introduce government policy and public health interventions aimed at reducing rates of young mo...

From changing diapers and minding the kids when school is out to providing support when they set fire to the carpet, grandparents can be invaluable to have around. What motivates grandparents to lend a hand? Several disciplines have offered answers. The most important accounts come from life-history theory and evolutionary psychology, sociology, an...

In this paper we review the empirical evidence that women receive help from family members in raising children, by drawing together published research which has explicitly investigated the impact of kin on child well-being. It is clear from this review that in both pre- and post-demographic transition societies family matters: the presence of certa...

There is growing evidence that the reproductive schedules of female mammals can be affected by conditions experienced during early development, with low parental investment leading to accelerated life-history strategies in the offspring. In humans, the relationships between early-life conditions and timing of puberty are well studied, but much less...

This response outlines more reasons why we need the integrative framework of grandparental investments and intergenerational transfers that we advocated in the target article. We discusses obstacles – from misconceptions to poor measures – that stand in the way of such a framework and of a better understanding of the effects of grandparenting in th...

What motivates grandparents to their altruism? We review answers from evolutionary theory, sociology, and economics. Sometimes in direct conflict with each other, these accounts of grandparental investment exist side-by-side, with little or no theoretical integration. They all account for some of the data, and none account for all of it. We call fo...

The association between a woman's age at menarche and the birth weight of her children is highly variable across human populations. Life history theory proposes that a woman's early environment may moderate this association and thus account for some of the variation between populations. According to one life history theory model, for individuals wh...

There is considerable interest in the mechanisms maintaining early reproduction in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged groups in developed countries. Previous research has suggested that differential exposure to early-life factors such as low birthweight and lack of paternal involvement during childhood may be relevant. Here, we used longitudi...

The influence that grandparents have on the life history traits of their descendants has been studied extensively. However, no attention has been paid to the potential influence a grandparent's own reproductive history has on the investment they make in their grandchildren. We use data from 658 Swiss grandchildren and 591 of their grandparents to i...

Suboptimal fetal growth has been associated with an increased risk of adult disease, which may be exacerbated by an increased placental weight-to-fetal weight ratio. Placental weight is a summary measure of placental growth and development throughout pregnancy. However, measures of placental structure, including the chorionic disk surface area and...

The present study investigated the association of depressive personality traits to treatment outcome for depression. One hundred and nineteen patients with a primary diagnosis of major depression were divided into high- and low-depressive personality groups, and depression symptomatology was assessed pre- and postparticipation in a standardized gro...

Life history theory suggests that in risky and uncertain environments the optimal reproductive strategy is to reproduce early in order to maximize the probability of leaving any descendants at all. The fact that early menarche facilitates early reproduction provides an adaptationist rationale for our first two hypotheses: that women who experience...

We present a novel evolutionary analysis of low birth weight (LBW). LBW is a well-known risk factor for increased infant morbidity and mortality. Its causes, however, remain obscure and there is a vital need for new approaches. Life history theory, the most dynamic branch of evolutionary ecology, provides important insights into the potential role...

Gangestad & Simpson's model of the evolution of within-sex differences in reproductive strategies requires a degree of female choice that probably did not exist because of male coercion. We argue as well that the tradeoff between current and future reproduction accounts for more of the within-sex differences in reproductive strategies than the “goo...

The large classes found in many first year university units present the challenge of maintaining student access to valuable material in the face of increasing student diversity. The development of a self-paced, interactive, computer-based learning resource was designed to provide the flexible delivery necessary to address these challenges of the la...