Sarah Myers

University College London | UCL · Department of Anthropology

There is significant evidence from large-scale, industrial and post-industrial societies that greater inequality in income and wealth are negatively associated with both population health across multiple domains and increasing health inequalities. However, in high-income Western societies, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of wealth dispar...

Background: Social support in all forms is essential in maintaining breast/chest-feeding and helping to improve general infant feeding experience among parents. With breastfeeding durations notably short in the UK, the question of the effectiveness and quality of support for infant feeding comes to the fore. Current literature suggests that togethe...

Background Postnatal depression (PND) is highly detrimental for both mother and baby, with a pre-COVID-19 estimated prevalence of up to 23% in Europe. Low social support is a key risk factor for developing PND. Social distancing measures designed to limit COVID-19 transmission likely created unprecedented barriers for mothers to access social suppo...

Mounting evidence indicates the mental health of postnatal mothers suffered during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a four-wave online survey of United Kingdom mothers we explore the continuing trajectory of postnatal depressive symptoms. During the first lockdown 47.5% of mothers (n=162) met the ≥11 Edinburgh Postnatal Depression S...

Objectives Physical breastfeeding problems can lead women to terminate breastfeeding earlier than planned. In high-income countries such as the UK, breastfeeding problems have been attributed to the cultural and individual “inexperience” of breastfeeding, ultimately leading to lower breastfeeding rates. Yet, cross-cultural evidence suggests breastf...

Postnatal/postpartum depression (PND/PPD) had a pre-COVID-19 estimated prevalence ranging up to 23% in Europe, 33% in Australia, and 64% in America, and is detrimental to both mothers and their infants. Low social support is a key risk factor for developing PND. From an evolutionary perspective this is perhaps unsurprising, as humans evolved as coo...

It has long been acknowledged that women with children require social support to promote their health and wellbeing, as well as that of their children. However, the dominant conceptualizations of support have been heavily influenced by Western family norms. The consequence, at best, has been to stifle our understanding of the nature and consequence...

Social support is a known determinant of breastfeeding behaviour and is generally considered beneficial. However, social support encompasses a myriad of different supportive acts, providing scope for diverse infant feeding outcomes. Given the vulnerability of postpartum mental health, this paper aims to explore both how support prolongs breastfeedi...

Postnatal/postpartum depression (PND/PPD) had a pre-covid estimated prevalence ranging up to 23% in Europe, 33% in Australia, and 64% in America, and is detrimental to both mothers and their infants. Low social support is a key risk factor for developing PND. From an evolutionary perspective this is perhaps unsurprising, as humans evolved as cooper...

Social support is a known determinant of breastfeeding behaviour and is generally considered beneficial. However, social support encompasses a myriad of different supportive acts, providing scope for diverse consequences. Given the vulnerability of postpartum mental health, it is crucial to understand not only how support prolongs breastfeeding, bu...

Objectives: Physical breastfeeding problems can lead women to terminate breastfeeding earlier than planned. In high-income countries, breastfeeding problems have been attributed to the cultural and individual “inexperience” of breastfeeding, ultimately leading to lower breastfeeding rates. Yet, cross-cultural evidence suggests breastfeeding problem...

Local physical and social environmental factors are important drivers of human health and behaviour. Environmental perception has been linked with both reproduction and parenting, but links between subjective environmental experiences and breastfeeding remain unclear. Using retrospective data from an online survey of UK mothers of children aged 0–2...

We welcome the comments by Harpur and Haddon (2020) on our paper on the typologies of social support and its associations with breastfeeding at two months in a UK sample. We share their concerns around the under-acknowledged costs of breastfeeding, and the need for a truly family-centred approach to breastfeeding support. However, they are mistaken...

There is extensive evidence to suggest that social support improves breastfeeding outcomes. Building on this evidence-base, public health services and interventions aiming to improve breastfeeding rates have primarily targeted informational and emotional support to mothers, reflecting an individual behaviour-change approach. However, mothers exist...

Extensive evidence suggests that social support improves breastfeeding outcomes. Building on this evidence-base, public health services and interventions with aims to improve breastfeeding rates have focused on providing informational and emotional support to mothers. However, mothers presumably exist within a wider social network, and the characte...

Mother and infant health have long been under a spotlight, with an array of institutions and agencies targeting the mother-child unit to improve population outcomes. However, mothers and their children do not exist in a vacuum, and other actors provide mothers with essential support. Indeed, the discourse on mother-child health increasingly acknowl...

Male-biased sex ratios have been observed in multiple small-scale societies. Although intentional and systematic female-biased mortality has been posited as an explanation, there is often a lack of ethnographic evidence of systematic female neglect and/or infanticide. The Agta, a foraging population from the Philippines, have a skewed sex ratio of...

Male-biased sex ratios have been observed in multiple small-scale societies. Although intentional and systematic female-biased mortality has been posited as an explanation, there is often a lack of ethnographic evidence of systematic female neglect and/or infanticide. The Agta, a foraging population from the Philippines, have a skewed sex ratio of...

Rationale: A growing body of literature links both depressive symptoms generally, and those specifically in the postnatal period, with an inflammatory immune response. Evolutionary medical approaches, such as the Pathogen Host Defence Theory of Depression (PATHOS-D), have likened depression to sickness behaviour in other mammals, and propose that...

Postnatal depression (PND) is known to be associated with a range of detrimental child and adolescent outcomes, resulting from its disruptive impact on mother-child relationship quality. However, until now little has been known about the impact of PND on the longer-term relationships between mothers and their children, and any intergenerational eff...

Background and objectives: Postnatal depression (PND) presents a puzzling phenomenon to evolutionary anthropologists as it is highly prevalent and yet detrimental to child development and maternal health. Adaptive explanations have been proposed, but have not been tested with data that directly link PND to female fertility. Methodology: A survey...