Chvaja Radim, Shaver John H, Spake Laure, Hassan Anushe, Alam Nurul, Rai Rajesh Kumar, Sear Rebecca, Sosis Richard, Shenk Mary Katherine
Religion Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin 9016, Otago, New Zealand.
Faculty of Economics, European Research University, 702 00 Ostrava, Czech Republic.
Proc Biol Sci. 2025 Aug;292(2053):20251352. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2025.1352. Epub 2025 Aug 20.
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.
在人类中，父亲的投入已被证明能提高生育能力和后代存活率。虽然关于心理和生态因素对人类父亲投入的影响已有较为充分的记录，但文化因素的影响仍不太为人所理解。有人提出，宗教可能是塑造父亲投入的一个重要社会文化因素。首先，宗教常常向父亲灌输家庭价值观，这可能会增加他们的投入。其次，如果宗教在母亲中宣扬家庭价值观，这些价值观可能会通过宗教行为传递出来，从而鼓励父亲增加投入。或者，父亲可能会将母亲的宗教信仰作为母亲对家庭承诺的一种策略性暗示，从而减少自己的投入，将责任转嫁给母亲。为了评估这些假设，我们分析了印度和孟加拉国822个家庭中1238名17岁以下儿童的数据。我们的研究结果表明，在印度，父亲的宗教信仰与父亲帮助做家务以及给予母亲情感支持呈正相关。在孟加拉国，母亲的宗教信仰与父亲给予母亲情感支持以及养育孩子呈正相关。在这两个国家，在宗教信仰最强的父亲中，母亲的宗教信仰与父亲的投入呈正相关。这些研究结果表明，宗教在父亲投入中发挥着复杂的作用，这是由父母的宗教信仰和社会生态环境的相互作用所塑造的。
