Sarah Myers

• Doctor of Philosophy
• PostDoc Position at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Background Breastfeeding rates in the UK have remained stubbornly low despite long-term intervention efforts. Social support is a key, theoretically grounded intervention method, yet social support has been inconsistently related to improved breastfeeding. Understanding of the dynamics between infant feeding and social support is currently limited...

Changing social norms, shared beliefs about what is acceptable, is a key focus of global health campaigns aimed at ending intimate partner violence against women. In Ethiopia it is estimated that one in four women have been assaulted by a male partner (CSA & ICF, 2016), and over half the population hold attitudes supportive of this form of violence...

Evolutionary anthropologists argue that allomothering is crucial for successful childrearing in humans. Using survey data from postpartum mothers in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic (approx. N=250), we exploit the “natural experiment” conditions of lockdown to test the hypothesis that allomothering has direct and indirect effects on child develo...

Breastfeeding rates in the UK have remained stubbornly low despite long-term intervention efforts. Social support is a key, theoretically grounded intervention target in both cases, yet they have a weak evidence base. Understanding of the dynamics between infant feeding, maternal wellbeing and social support is currently limited by retrospective co...

Recent estimates indicate half of Ethiopian girls aged 15 to 19 have experienced female genital mutilation/cutting (FGMC). Establishing whether and how pro-FGMC norms are maintained through social transmission is a key priority for global eradication efforts. Here, we present the first large-scale socio-centric social network study estimating socia...

Aims This study examines the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on postpartum mothers in England, with the aim of identifying opportunities to improve maternal experience and wellbeing. The postpartum/postnatal period is widely acknowledged as a time when mothers require greater levels of support from multiple sources. However, stay-at-home orders, common...

Background and objectives There is significant evidence from large-scale, industrial and post-industrial societies that greater income and wealth inequality is negatively associated with both population health and increasing health inequalities. However, whether such relationships are inevitable and should be expected to impact the health of small-...

Humans exhibit a broad range of post-marital residence patterns and there is growing recognition that post-marital residence predicts women's reproductive success; however, the nature of the relationship is probably dependent on whether co-resident kin are cooperators or competitors. Here, we explore this relationship in a Tibetan population, where...

Background Shorter breastfeeding duration is associated with detrimental consequences for infant health/development and maternal health. Previous studies suggest social support is essential in maintaining breast/chest-feeding and helping to improve general infant feeding experiences. Public health bodies therefore work to support breastfeeding in t...

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...

The postpartum/postnatal period is a time where mothers require greater levels of support from multiple formal and informal sources. However, stay-at-home orders commonly known as “lockdown” deployed in some countries to limit COVID-19 transmission likely led to reduced availability of support, which may have implications for maternal wellbeing. In...

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...