Supplementary material from "Sedentarization and maternal childcare networks: role of risk, gender and demography"

Nonetheless, little exploration has occurred into why we see such diversity. Wide maternal childcare networks may be a consequence of a lack of resource accumulation in mobile hunter–gatherers—where instead households rely on risk-pooling in informal insurance networks.

By contrast, when households settle and accumulate resources, they are able to retain risk by absorbing losses. Thus, the size and composition of mothers' childcare networks may depend on risk-buffering, as captured by mobile and settled households in the Agta, a Philippine foraging population with diverse lifestyles. Across 78 children, we find that childcare from grandmothers and sisters was higher in settled camps, while childcare from male kin was lower, offering little support for risk-buffering.