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Accepted manuscript

Religious Parents Receive More Alloparental Aid in Rural Bangladesh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2025

Theodore Samore*
Affiliation:
Religion Programme, University of Otago, NZ
Richard Sosis
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, USA
John Shaver
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Baylor University, USA
Nurul Alam
Affiliation:
ICDDR,B: Centre for Health and Population Research – Health Systems and Population Studies Division
Radim Chvaja
Affiliation:
Religion Programme, University of Otago, NZ European Research University, CZE
Matthew Conrad
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, USA
Anushé Hassan
Affiliation:
Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
Robert Lynch
Affiliation:
Independent researcher
Susan Schaffnit
Affiliation:
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, USA
Rebecca Sear
Affiliation:
Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University, UK
Laure Spake
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University (SUNY), USA
Joseph Watts
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Speech and Hearing, University of Canterbury, NZ
Mary Shenk
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
*
Corresponding author: Theodore Samore, Email: theo.samore@gmail.com

Abstract

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Researchers have long speculated about the evolutionary benefits of religiosity. One explanation for the evolution of religious ritual is that rituals signal commitment to co-religionists. As a major domain of prosocial behavior, alloparental care – or care directed at children by non-parents – is a plausible benefit of religious signaling. The religious alloparenting hypothesis posits that parents who signal religious commitment receive greater alloparental support. Prior research on religiosity, cooperation, and allocare tends to treat individuals as isolated units, despite the inherent collective nature of religious cooperation. Here, we address this limitation in a survey-based study of 710 parents in rural Bangladesh. Instead of focusing only on mothers, we consider the interplay between both mothers and fathers in eliciting allocare, and leverage variation in the covertness of religious rituals to test a key mechanistic assumption linking religious ritual with cooperation. We find that parents who practice religious rituals more frequently receive greater alloparental support from co-religionists. This effect is moderated by parent gender, as well as variation in the visibility of religious rituals. Women’s private practices positively affect only those alloparents with whom they share a household, while men’s public practices positively affect alloparents more broadly.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re- use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press.