Among humans, paternal investment has been shown to enhance both fertility and offspring survival. While psychological and ecological influences on human paternal investment are relatively well documented, cultural influences remain less well understood. It has been proposed that religion can be an important socio-cultural factor shaping paternal investment. First, religions often instill pro-family values in fathers, potentially increasing their investment. Second, if religions promote pro-family values in mothers, these values may be communicated through religious behaviours, encouraging greater paternal investment. Alternatively, fathers may use maternal religiosity as a strategic cue of maternal pro-family commitment to reduce their own investment, shifting responsibility to mothers. To evaluate these hypotheses, we analyse data from 1238 children under 17 years old across 822 households in India and Bangladesh. Our findings suggest that in India, paternal religiosity is positively associated with fathers' housework assistance and emotional support to mothers. In Bangladesh, maternal religiosity is positively associated with paternal emotional support to mothers and child provisioning. In both countries, maternal religiosity positively associates with paternal investment among the most religious fathers. These findings indicate that religion plays a complex role in paternal investment, shaped by the interplay of parental religiosity and socio-ecological context.

• Keywords
• Bangladesh, India, allomaternal care, parental religiosity, paternal investment,
• MeSH
• Child MeSH
• Adult MeSH
• Infant MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Adolescent MeSH
• Religion * MeSH
• Fathers * psychology   MeSH
• Child, Preschool MeSH
• Check Tag
• Child MeSH
• Adult MeSH
• Infant MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Adolescent MeSH
• Male MeSH
• Child, Preschool MeSH
• Female MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Geographicals
• Bangladesh MeSH
• India MeSH

OBJECTIVES: Human childrearing is cooperative, with women often able to achieve relatively high fertility through help from many individuals. Previous work has documented tremendous socioecological variation in who supports women in childrearing, but less is known about the intracultural correlates of variation in allomaternal support. In the highly religious, high-fertility setting of The Gambia, we studied whether religious mothers have more children and receive more support with their children. METHODS: We randomly sampled 395 mothers and 745 focal children enrolled in the Kiang West (The Gambia) Longitudinal Population Study cohort. Structured interviews asked mothers who and how often people invest in their children, and about their religious practices. Data were collected at participants' homes on electronic tablet-based long-form surveys and analyzed using the Bayesian hierarchical models. RESULTS: Religiosity was weakly associated with women's higher age-adjusted fertility. Maternal religiosity was negatively related to maternal investment in focal children, but positively associated with total allomaternal support. Specifically, a woman's religiosity was positively associated with allomaternal support from matrilineal kin, other offspring, and affinal kin, but unrelated to paternal, patrilineal, and non-kin investment. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that higher fertility among religious mothers may be supported by high levels of investment from biological and affinal kin. Matrilineal kin, other siblings, and affinal kin seem to be the most responsive to a woman's religiosity. Our findings cast doubt on interpretations of women's religious behaviors as signals of fidelity, and instead suggest they may be part of strategies to enable collective allomaternal resources and higher relative fertility.

• Keywords
• Alloparenting, The Gambia, fertility, parental investment, religion,
• MeSH
• Adult MeSH
• Fertility * MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Longitudinal Studies MeSH
• Mothers * statistics & numerical data   psychology   MeSH
• Adolescent MeSH
• Young Adult MeSH
• Religion MeSH
• Child, Preschool MeSH
• Parenting MeSH
• Check Tag
• Adult MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Adolescent MeSH
• Young Adult MeSH
• Male MeSH
• Child, Preschool MeSH
• Female MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Geographicals
• Gambia MeSH