Fathers’ brains adjust their structure and function to parenthood María Paternina-Die, CC BY-ND The time fathers devote to child care every week has tripled over the past 50 years in the United States. The increase in fathers’ involvement in child rearing is even steeper in countries that have expanded paid paternity leave or created incentives… Continue reading Fatherhood changes men’s brains, according to before-and-after MRI scans
Almost 70 million people in the U.S. report being estranged from a family member. Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy/Getty Images Holidays are often a time of strengthening family bonds and relationships. But for those who have difficult relationships with siblings, parents and extended family, it can be a stressful and upsetting time. We asked… Continue reading What is family estrangement? A relationship expert describes the problem and research agenda
Only about 1 in 5 computer scientists are women. Rachel Murray/Getty Images for MGA Entertainment Stereotypes about what boys and girls supposedly like aren’t hard to find. Toy advertisements send signals that science and electronic toys are intended for boys rather than girls. Computer scientists and engineers on television shows and movies are often white… Continue reading Stereotypes about girls dissuade many from careers in computer science
Why so sad, George? Chuck Savage via Getty Images In any other time, the jobs news that came down on Dec. 2, 2022, would be reason for cheer. The U.S. added 263,000 nonfarm jobs in November, leaving the unemployment rate at a low 3.7%. Moreover, wages are up – with average hourly pay jumping 5.1%… Continue reading Jobs are up! Wages are up! So why am I as an economist so gloomy?
Red knots stop to feed along the Delaware shore as they migrate from the high Arctic to South America. Gregory Breese, USFWS/Flickr A biodiversity crisis is reducing the variety of life on Earth. Under pressure from land and water pollution, development, overhunting, poaching, climate change and species invasions, approximately 1 million plant and animal species… Continue reading Protecting 30% of Earth’s surface for nature means thinking about connections near and far
The previous pandemics to which people often compare COVID-19 – the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Black Death bubonic plague (1342-1353), the Justinian plague (541-542) – don’t seem that long ago to archaeologists. We’re used to thinking about people who lived many centuries or even millennia ago. Evidence found directly on skeletons shows that infectious diseases have been with us since our beginnings as a species.
Bioarchaeologistslikeus analyze skeletons to reveal more about how infectious diseases originated and spread in ancient times.
How did aspects of early people’s social behavior allow diseases to flourish? How did people try to care for the sick? How did individuals and entire societies modify behaviors to protect themselves and others?
Knowing these things might help scientists understand why COVID-19 has wreaked such global devastation and what needs to be put in place before the next pandemic.
These round lesions are pathognomonic signs of syphilis.
Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
Clues about illnesses long ago
How can bioarchaeologists possibly know these things, especially for early cultures that left no written record? Even in literate societies, poorer and marginalized segments were rarely written about.
In most archaeological settings, all that remains of our ancestors is the skeleton.
Tuberculosis leaves telltale markings in the spine.Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
For some infectious diseases, like syphilis, tuberculosis and leprosy, the location, characteristics and distribution of marks on a skeleton’s bones can serve as distinctive “pathognomonic” indicators of the infection.
Most skeletal signs of disease are non-specific, though, meaning bioarchaeologists today can tell an individual was sick, but not with what disease. Some diseases never affect the skeleton at all, including plague and viral infections like HIV and COVID-19. And diseases that kill quickly don’t have enough time to leave a mark on victims’ bones.
To uncover evidence of specific diseases beyond obvious bone changes, bioarchaeologists use a variety of methods, often with the help of other specialists, like geneticists or parasitologists. For instance, analyzing soil collected in a grave from around a person’s pelvis can reveal the remains of intestinal parasites, such as tapeworms and round worms. Genetic analyses can also identify the DNA of infectious pathogens still clinging to ancient bones and teeth.
Bioarchaeologists can also estimate age at death based on how developed a youngster’s teeth and bones are, or how much an adult’s skeleton has degenerated over its lifespan. Then demographers help us draw age profiles for populations that died in epidemics. Most infectious diseases disproportionately affect those with the weakest immune systems, usually the very young and very old.
Ground penetrating radar shows mass graves from the small Aboriginal settlement of Cherbourg in Australia, where 490 out of 500 people were struck down by the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, with about 90 deaths.
Kelsey Lowe, CC BY-ND
We can find out what infections were around in the past through our ancestors’ remains, but what does this tell us about the bigger picture of the origin and evolution of infections? Archaeological clues can help researchers reconstruct aspects of socioeconomic organization, environment and technology. And we can study how variations in these risk factors caused diseases to vary across time, in different areas of the world and even among people living in the same societies.
How infectious disease got its first foothold
Human biology affects culture in complex ways. Culture influences biology, too, although it can be hard for our bodies to keep up with rapid cultural changes. For example, in the 20th century, highly processed fast food replaced a more balanced and healthy diet for many. Because the human body evolved and was designed for a different world, this dietary switch resulted in a rise in diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
From a paleoepidemiological perspective, the most significant event in our species’ history was the adoption of farming. Agriculture arose independently in several places around the world beginning around 12,000 years ago.
Prior to this change, people lived as hunter-gatherers, with dogs as their only animal companions. They were very active and had a well balanced, varied diet that was high in protein and fiber and low in calories and fat. These small groups experienced parasites, bacterial infections and injuries while hunting wild animals and occasionally fighting with one another. They also had to deal with dental problems, including extreme wear, plaque and periodontal disease.
A healed fracture of the lower leg bones from a person buried in Roman Winchester, England.Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
One thing hunter-gatherers didn’t need to worry much about, however, was virulent infectious diseases that could move quickly from person to person throughout a large geographic region. Pathogens like the influenza virus were not able to effectively spread or even be maintained by small, mobile, and socially isolated populations.
The advent of agriculture resulted in larger, sedentary populations of people living in close proximity. New diseases could flourish in this new environment. The transition to agriculture was characterized by high childhood mortality, in which approximately 30% or more of children died before the age of 5.
And for the first time in an evolutionary history spanning millions of years, different species of mammals and birds became intimate neighbors. Once people began to live with newly domesticated animals, they were brought into the life cycle of a new group of diseases – called zoonoses – that previously had been limited to wild animals but could now jump into human beings.
Add to all this the stresses of poor sanitation and a deficient diet, as well as increased connections between distant communities through migration and trade especially between urban communities, and epidemics of infectious disease were able to take hold for the first time.
Globalization of disease
Later events in human history also resulted in major epidemiological transitions related to disease.
For more than 10,000 years, the people of Europe, the Middle East and Asia evolved along with particular zoonoses in their local environments. The animals people were in contact with varied from place to place. As people lived alongside particular animal species over long periods of time, a symbiosis could develop – as well as immune resistance to local zoonoses.
At the beginning of modern history, people from European empires also began traveling across the globe, taking with them a suite of “Old World” diseases that were devastating for groups who hadn’t evolved alongside them. Indigenous populations in Australia, the Pacific and the Americas had no biological familiarity with these new pathogens. Without immunity, one epidemic after another ravaged these groups. Mortality estimates range between 60-90%.
This skull of a person who lived more than 2,600 years ago in Peru shows evidence of a surgery, maybe to treat a head wound.
Other evidence shows that people have often done their best to protect others, as well as themselves, from disease. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the English village of Eyam, which made a self-sacrificing decision to isolate itself to prevent further spread of a plague from London in 1665.
In other eras, people with tuberculosis were placed in sanatoria, people with leprosy were admitted to specialized hospitals or segregated on islands or into remote areas, and urban dwellers fled cities when plagues came.
As the world faces yet another pandemic, the archaeological and historical record are reminders that people have lived with infectious disease for millennia. Pathogens have helped shape civilization, and humans have been resilient in the face of such crises.
Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Charlotte Roberts and Gabriel D. Wrobel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(13082) "Fathers' brains adjust their structure and function to parenthood María Paternina-Die, CC BY-ND
The time fathers devote to child care every week has tripled over the past 50 years in the United States. The increase in fathers’ involvement in child rearing is even steeper in countries that have expanded paid paternity leave or created incentives for fathers to take leave, such as Germany, Spain, Sweden and Iceland. And a growing body of research finds that children with engaged fathers do better on a range of outcomes, including physical health and cognitive performance.
Despite dads’ rising participation in child care and their importance in the lives of their kids, there is surprisingly little research about how fatherhood affects men. Even fewer studies focus on the brain and biological changes that might support fathering.
It is no surprise that the transition to parenthood can be transformative for anyone with a new baby. For women who become biological mothers, pregnancy-related hormonal changes help to explain why a new mother’s brain might change. But does fatherhood reshape the brains and bodies of men – who don’t experience pregnancy directly – in ways that motivate their parenting? We set out to investigate this question in our recent study of first-time fathers in two countries.
Recent research has found compelling evidence that pregnancy can enhance neuroplasticity, or remodeling, in the structures of a woman’s brain. Using magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have identified large-scale changes in the anatomy of women’s brains from before to after pregnancy.
In one study, researchers in Spain scanned first-time mothers before conceiving, and again at two months after they gave birth. Compared with childless women, the new mothers’ brain volume was smaller, suggesting that key brain structures actually shrank in size across pregnancy and the early postpartum period. The brain changes were so pronounced that an algorithm could easily differentiate the brain of a woman who had gone through a pregnancy from that of a woman with no children.
All across the brain, these changes are visible in gray matter, the layer of tissue in the brain that is rich with neurons. Pregnancy appears to affect structures in the cortex – the most recently evolved, outer surface of the brain – including regions linked with thinking about others’ minds, a process that researchers call “theory of mind.” Mothers also show brain changes in the subcortex – the more ancient structures nestled deeper within the brain that are linked with more primitive functions, including emotion and motivation.
Why do these structural brain changes happen after pregnancy?
Researchers believe these brain changes may facilitate mothers’ sensitive caregiving of newborns, who demand constant attention and cannot verbalize their needs. Indeed, when mothers see photos or videos of their own infants, it activates many of the same brain regions that changed the most across pregnancy. It seems plausible that new mothers’ brains change in ways that help them to respond to and care for their newborns.
But what about fathers? They do not experience pregnancy directly, but may take care of the new baby, too.
Dads’ brains change, too
As with practicing any new skill, the experience of caring for an infant might leave a mark on the brains of new parents. This is what neuroscientists call experience-induced brain plasticity – like the brain changes that occur when you learn a new language or master a new musical instrument.
A sparse but growing body of research is observing this type of plasticity in fathers who experience the cognitive, physical and emotional demands of caring for a newborn without going through pregnancy. In terms of brain function, for instance, gay male fathers who are primary caregivers show stronger connections between parenting brain regions when viewing their infants, compared with secondary male caregivers.
Scientists are interested in what spending more time with a newborn means for a father’s brain.
Cavan Images via Getty Images
To learn more about plasticity in new dads’ brains, our research groups at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón in Madrid, associated with the BeMother project, collaborated on a new study. We recruited 40 men – 20 in Spain and 20 in California – and put each into an MRI scanner twice: first during their partner’s pregnancy, and again after their baby was 6 months old. We also included a control group of 17 childless men.
We found several significant changes in the brains of fathers from prenatal to postpartum that did not emerge within the childless men we followed across the same time period. In both the Spanish and Californian samples, fathers’ brain changes appeared in regions of the cortex that contribute to visual processing, attention and empathy toward the baby.
It’s not clear yet whether simply spending more time parenting changes fathers’ brains or the changes occur in men who are more motivated to spend time parenting.
AJ_Watt/E+ via Getty Images
What remolds a new father’s brain?
The degree of brain plasticity in fathers may be linked with how much they interact with their baby. Although fathers in many parts of the world are increasingly taking part in child care, paternal involvement varies widely across different men. This range of involvement may explain why we found more subtle brain changes in these fathers compared with those observed in first-time mothers. In fact, brain changes in fathers were almost half the magnitude of the changes observed in the mothers.
Social, cultural and psychological factors that determine how much fathers engage with their children may, in turn, influence changes to the fathering brain. Indeed, Spanish fathers, who, on average, have more generous paternity leaves than fathers have in the U.S., displayed more pronounced changes in brain regions that support goal-directed attention, which may help fathers attune to their infants’ cues, compared with Californian fathers.
This finding raises the question of whether family policies that boost how much time dads spend on infant care during the early postpartum period may help support the development of the fathering brain. On the flip side, perhaps men who show more remodeling of the brain and hormones are also more motivated to participate in hands-on care.
Much more research is needed to tease out these questions and to figure out how best to intervene with fathers who may be at risk of having trouble adjusting to the parenting role. Despite the importance of fathers to child development, funding agencies have not tended to prioritize research on men becoming dads, but this may start to change as more findings like these emerge. Future studies with more detailed measures of postpartum caregiving can reveal more about parental brain plasticity in both men and women.
The previous pandemics to which people often compare COVID-19 – the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Black Death bubonic plague (1342-1353), the Justinian plague (541-542) – don’t seem that long ago to archaeologists. We’re used to thinking about people who lived many centuries or even millennia ago. Evidence found directly on skeletons shows that infectious diseases have been with us since our beginnings as a species.
Bioarchaeologistslikeus analyze skeletons to reveal more about how infectious diseases originated and spread in ancient times.
How did aspects of early people’s social behavior allow diseases to flourish? How did people try to care for the sick? How did individuals and entire societies modify behaviors to protect themselves and others?
Knowing these things might help scientists understand why COVID-19 has wreaked such global devastation and what needs to be put in place before the next pandemic.
These round lesions are pathognomonic signs of syphilis.
Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
Clues about illnesses long ago
How can bioarchaeologists possibly know these things, especially for early cultures that left no written record? Even in literate societies, poorer and marginalized segments were rarely written about.
In most archaeological settings, all that remains of our ancestors is the skeleton.
Tuberculosis leaves telltale markings in the spine.Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
For some infectious diseases, like syphilis, tuberculosis and leprosy, the location, characteristics and distribution of marks on a skeleton’s bones can serve as distinctive “pathognomonic” indicators of the infection.
Most skeletal signs of disease are non-specific, though, meaning bioarchaeologists today can tell an individual was sick, but not with what disease. Some diseases never affect the skeleton at all, including plague and viral infections like HIV and COVID-19. And diseases that kill quickly don’t have enough time to leave a mark on victims’ bones.
To uncover evidence of specific diseases beyond obvious bone changes, bioarchaeologists use a variety of methods, often with the help of other specialists, like geneticists or parasitologists. For instance, analyzing soil collected in a grave from around a person’s pelvis can reveal the remains of intestinal parasites, such as tapeworms and round worms. Genetic analyses can also identify the DNA of infectious pathogens still clinging to ancient bones and teeth.
Bioarchaeologists can also estimate age at death based on how developed a youngster’s teeth and bones are, or how much an adult’s skeleton has degenerated over its lifespan. Then demographers help us draw age profiles for populations that died in epidemics. Most infectious diseases disproportionately affect those with the weakest immune systems, usually the very young and very old.
Ground penetrating radar shows mass graves from the small Aboriginal settlement of Cherbourg in Australia, where 490 out of 500 people were struck down by the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, with about 90 deaths.
Kelsey Lowe, CC BY-ND
We can find out what infections were around in the past through our ancestors’ remains, but what does this tell us about the bigger picture of the origin and evolution of infections? Archaeological clues can help researchers reconstruct aspects of socioeconomic organization, environment and technology. And we can study how variations in these risk factors caused diseases to vary across time, in different areas of the world and even among people living in the same societies.
How infectious disease got its first foothold
Human biology affects culture in complex ways. Culture influences biology, too, although it can be hard for our bodies to keep up with rapid cultural changes. For example, in the 20th century, highly processed fast food replaced a more balanced and healthy diet for many. Because the human body evolved and was designed for a different world, this dietary switch resulted in a rise in diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
From a paleoepidemiological perspective, the most significant event in our species’ history was the adoption of farming. Agriculture arose independently in several places around the world beginning around 12,000 years ago.
Prior to this change, people lived as hunter-gatherers, with dogs as their only animal companions. They were very active and had a well balanced, varied diet that was high in protein and fiber and low in calories and fat. These small groups experienced parasites, bacterial infections and injuries while hunting wild animals and occasionally fighting with one another. They also had to deal with dental problems, including extreme wear, plaque and periodontal disease.
A healed fracture of the lower leg bones from a person buried in Roman Winchester, England.Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
One thing hunter-gatherers didn’t need to worry much about, however, was virulent infectious diseases that could move quickly from person to person throughout a large geographic region. Pathogens like the influenza virus were not able to effectively spread or even be maintained by small, mobile, and socially isolated populations.
The advent of agriculture resulted in larger, sedentary populations of people living in close proximity. New diseases could flourish in this new environment. The transition to agriculture was characterized by high childhood mortality, in which approximately 30% or more of children died before the age of 5.
And for the first time in an evolutionary history spanning millions of years, different species of mammals and birds became intimate neighbors. Once people began to live with newly domesticated animals, they were brought into the life cycle of a new group of diseases – called zoonoses – that previously had been limited to wild animals but could now jump into human beings.
Add to all this the stresses of poor sanitation and a deficient diet, as well as increased connections between distant communities through migration and trade especially between urban communities, and epidemics of infectious disease were able to take hold for the first time.
Globalization of disease
Later events in human history also resulted in major epidemiological transitions related to disease.
For more than 10,000 years, the people of Europe, the Middle East and Asia evolved along with particular zoonoses in their local environments. The animals people were in contact with varied from place to place. As people lived alongside particular animal species over long periods of time, a symbiosis could develop – as well as immune resistance to local zoonoses.
At the beginning of modern history, people from European empires also began traveling across the globe, taking with them a suite of “Old World” diseases that were devastating for groups who hadn’t evolved alongside them. Indigenous populations in Australia, the Pacific and the Americas had no biological familiarity with these new pathogens. Without immunity, one epidemic after another ravaged these groups. Mortality estimates range between 60-90%.
This skull of a person who lived more than 2,600 years ago in Peru shows evidence of a surgery, maybe to treat a head wound.
Other evidence shows that people have often done their best to protect others, as well as themselves, from disease. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the English village of Eyam, which made a self-sacrificing decision to isolate itself to prevent further spread of a plague from London in 1665.
In other eras, people with tuberculosis were placed in sanatoria, people with leprosy were admitted to specialized hospitals or segregated on islands or into remote areas, and urban dwellers fled cities when plagues came.
As the world faces yet another pandemic, the archaeological and historical record are reminders that people have lived with infectious disease for millennia. Pathogens have helped shape civilization, and humans have been resilient in the face of such crises.
Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Charlotte Roberts and Gabriel D. Wrobel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(18732) "Dead men do tell tales through their physical remains. AP Photo/Francesco Bellini
The previous pandemics to which people often compare COVID-19 – the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Black Death bubonic plague (1342-1353), the Justinian plague (541-542) – don’t seem that long ago to archaeologists. We’re used to thinking about people who lived many centuries or even millennia ago. Evidence found directly on skeletons shows that infectious diseases have been with us since our beginnings as a species.
Bioarchaeologistslikeus analyze skeletons to reveal more about how infectious diseases originated and spread in ancient times.
How did aspects of early people’s social behavior allow diseases to flourish? How did people try to care for the sick? How did individuals and entire societies modify behaviors to protect themselves and others?
Knowing these things might help scientists understand why COVID-19 has wreaked such global devastation and what needs to be put in place before the next pandemic.
These round lesions are pathognomonic signs of syphilis.
Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
Clues about illnesses long ago
How can bioarchaeologists possibly know these things, especially for early cultures that left no written record? Even in literate societies, poorer and marginalized segments were rarely written about.
In most archaeological settings, all that remains of our ancestors is the skeleton.
Tuberculosis leaves telltale markings in the spine.Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
For some infectious diseases, like syphilis, tuberculosis and leprosy, the location, characteristics and distribution of marks on a skeleton’s bones can serve as distinctive “pathognomonic” indicators of the infection.
Most skeletal signs of disease are non-specific, though, meaning bioarchaeologists today can tell an individual was sick, but not with what disease. Some diseases never affect the skeleton at all, including plague and viral infections like HIV and COVID-19. And diseases that kill quickly don’t have enough time to leave a mark on victims’ bones.
To uncover evidence of specific diseases beyond obvious bone changes, bioarchaeologists use a variety of methods, often with the help of other specialists, like geneticists or parasitologists. For instance, analyzing soil collected in a grave from around a person’s pelvis can reveal the remains of intestinal parasites, such as tapeworms and round worms. Genetic analyses can also identify the DNA of infectious pathogens still clinging to ancient bones and teeth.
Bioarchaeologists can also estimate age at death based on how developed a youngster’s teeth and bones are, or how much an adult’s skeleton has degenerated over its lifespan. Then demographers help us draw age profiles for populations that died in epidemics. Most infectious diseases disproportionately affect those with the weakest immune systems, usually the very young and very old.
Ground penetrating radar shows mass graves from the small Aboriginal settlement of Cherbourg in Australia, where 490 out of 500 people were struck down by the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, with about 90 deaths.
Kelsey Lowe, CC BY-ND
We can find out what infections were around in the past through our ancestors’ remains, but what does this tell us about the bigger picture of the origin and evolution of infections? Archaeological clues can help researchers reconstruct aspects of socioeconomic organization, environment and technology. And we can study how variations in these risk factors caused diseases to vary across time, in different areas of the world and even among people living in the same societies.
How infectious disease got its first foothold
Human biology affects culture in complex ways. Culture influences biology, too, although it can be hard for our bodies to keep up with rapid cultural changes. For example, in the 20th century, highly processed fast food replaced a more balanced and healthy diet for many. Because the human body evolved and was designed for a different world, this dietary switch resulted in a rise in diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
From a paleoepidemiological perspective, the most significant event in our species’ history was the adoption of farming. Agriculture arose independently in several places around the world beginning around 12,000 years ago.
Prior to this change, people lived as hunter-gatherers, with dogs as their only animal companions. They were very active and had a well balanced, varied diet that was high in protein and fiber and low in calories and fat. These small groups experienced parasites, bacterial infections and injuries while hunting wild animals and occasionally fighting with one another. They also had to deal with dental problems, including extreme wear, plaque and periodontal disease.
A healed fracture of the lower leg bones from a person buried in Roman Winchester, England.Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
One thing hunter-gatherers didn’t need to worry much about, however, was virulent infectious diseases that could move quickly from person to person throughout a large geographic region. Pathogens like the influenza virus were not able to effectively spread or even be maintained by small, mobile, and socially isolated populations.
The advent of agriculture resulted in larger, sedentary populations of people living in close proximity. New diseases could flourish in this new environment. The transition to agriculture was characterized by high childhood mortality, in which approximately 30% or more of children died before the age of 5.
And for the first time in an evolutionary history spanning millions of years, different species of mammals and birds became intimate neighbors. Once people began to live with newly domesticated animals, they were brought into the life cycle of a new group of diseases – called zoonoses – that previously had been limited to wild animals but could now jump into human beings.
Add to all this the stresses of poor sanitation and a deficient diet, as well as increased connections between distant communities through migration and trade especially between urban communities, and epidemics of infectious disease were able to take hold for the first time.
Globalization of disease
Later events in human history also resulted in major epidemiological transitions related to disease.
For more than 10,000 years, the people of Europe, the Middle East and Asia evolved along with particular zoonoses in their local environments. The animals people were in contact with varied from place to place. As people lived alongside particular animal species over long periods of time, a symbiosis could develop – as well as immune resistance to local zoonoses.
At the beginning of modern history, people from European empires also began traveling across the globe, taking with them a suite of “Old World” diseases that were devastating for groups who hadn’t evolved alongside them. Indigenous populations in Australia, the Pacific and the Americas had no biological familiarity with these new pathogens. Without immunity, one epidemic after another ravaged these groups. Mortality estimates range between 60-90%.
This skull of a person who lived more than 2,600 years ago in Peru shows evidence of a surgery, maybe to treat a head wound.
Other evidence shows that people have often done their best to protect others, as well as themselves, from disease. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the English village of Eyam, which made a self-sacrificing decision to isolate itself to prevent further spread of a plague from London in 1665.
In other eras, people with tuberculosis were placed in sanatoria, people with leprosy were admitted to specialized hospitals or segregated on islands or into remote areas, and urban dwellers fled cities when plagues came.
As the world faces yet another pandemic, the archaeological and historical record are reminders that people have lived with infectious disease for millennia. Pathogens have helped shape civilization, and humans have been resilient in the face of such crises.
Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Charlotte Roberts and Gabriel D. Wrobel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(11411) "Almost 70 million people in the U.S. report being estranged from a family member. Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy/Getty Images
Holidays are often a time of strengthening family bonds and relationships. But for those who have difficult relationships with siblings, parents and extended family, it can be a stressful and upsetting time. We asked Kristina Scharp to explain why family relationships sometimes break down – and some things to consider when talking to those in this situation.
What is family estrangement?
Family estrangement occurs when at least one family member intentionally distances themselves from at least one other family member because of a negative relationship – or the perception of one.
Research suggests that at least 27% of adults experience family estrangement that either they or another family member initiates. This means that almost 70 million people in the United States report being estranged from a family member.
Perhaps the confusion comes from a common misconception that estrangement is a particular event or outcome. My research shows that family estrangement is a process, one that is ongoing and varies in degree. Put simply, family estrangement is a continuum where it is more accurate to characterize people as more or less estranged, as opposed to estranged or not estranged.
Estrangement is voluntary. This means that at least one person desired the distance as opposed to a situation where a third party intervened, like the foster care system or criminal justice system.
Estrangement is intentional. The distance between family members was not an accident or an instance of people losing touch.
Estrangement is often based on ongoing issues. It is less likely that family members suddenly decide they want distance. Rather, people report a long history of conflict and negativity.
Nevertheless, there are some instances when estrangement can be more sudden. For example, sometimes parents might reject a child if they come out as LBGTQ.
Estrangement occurs because of a perceived negative relationship. People do not simply desire distance without reason. Research suggests that reasons are typically severe – abuse, neglect and substance issues, for example. Even if the family members disagree about what has happened or the state of their relationship, at least one person perceives the relationship as negative.
Taken together, estrangement is a distinct process from other instances when family members might find themselves distanced, as is the case with adoption, military deployment and migration.
One related but distinct concept is parental alienation. Although the outcome of estrangement and alienation looks similar, the reasons for distance are different.
Parental alienation occurs after divorce, when one parent intentionally harms the relationship their child has with the other parent. Nevertheless, both estrangement and alienation are major family disruptions.
Parental alienation occurs when one parent intentionally harms the relationship their child has with the other parent.
fizkes/Getty Images
How do people accomplish and maintain distance?
When I began researching family estrangement, my primary question pertained not only to what estrangement was but also how people made it happen. Based on my research, adult children who distanced themselves from their parents described eight characteristics of estrangement:
• Communication quantity: The extent to which adult children communicate with their parents.
• Communication quality: The extent to which that communication is meaningful.
• Physical distance: The extent to which parents and children physically distance from one another.
• Presence/absence of emotion: The extent to which adult children feel emotion when thinking about their parent/estrangement.
• Positive/negative effect: The extent to which those emotions are positive and/or negative.
• Reconciliation/desire to be a family: The extent to which adult children hope to reconcile.
• Role reciprocity: The extent to which family members behave and care for one another in expected ways.
• Legal action: The extent to which adult children have taken any legal action against their parents, like emancipation, name change or changes to legal documents.
When considering these questions, one of the most important things to remember is that not everyone wants the same amount of communication, proximity and emotion. Thus, I like to think about estrangement as the gap between a person’s lived reality, as it pertains to the eight characteristics, and what their preferences would be if they had an ideal relationship.
Lessons learned
Although research into family estrangement is still burgeoning, here are some of the most important takeaways from my systematic research program:
Many people discuss not wanting to talk about their estrangement because they fear negative reactions from others. If an estranged person decides to disclose the circumstances surrounding their estranged relationship, I encourage people wanting to provide support to refrain from immediately expressing sorrow or recommending a reconciliation. Rather, consider asking them how they feel about the distance.
Often, estrangement can be a productive way for people to eliminate a toxic relationship. Just because people are biologically related does not guarantee a loving and supportive relationship. Sometimes, gaining distance is necessary for a person’s emotional and/or physical safety.
Because we live in a culture where “families are forever,” people not only have to accomplish distance but also maintain it. This maintenance is often a heavy burden, not only because people consistently recommend unwanted reconciliations but also because of both media representations of family and internalized feelings about familial obligation. Thus, even though estrangement can be a positive change for someone, it is nevertheless a difficult one.
Despite what scholars have begun to learn about family estrangement, there is an incredible amount of research still to be done. In conducting it, we might learn more about different perspectives, different catalysts for distance and the outcomes associated with it.
Kristina Scharp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
On March 16, 1941 – with European cities ablaze and Jews being herded into ghettos – The New York Times Magazine featured an illustrated story on Adolf Hitler’s retreat in the Berchtesgaden Alps.
Adopting a neutral tone, correspondent C Brooks Peters noted that historians of the future would do well to look at the importance of “the Führer’s private and personal domain,” where discussions about the war front were interspersed with “strolls with his three sheep dogs along majestic mountain trails.”
For more than 70 years, we have ignored Peters’s call to take Hitler’s domestic spaces seriously. When we think of the stage sets of Hitler’s political power, we are more apt to envision the Nuremberg Rally Grounds than his living room.
Yet it was through the architecture, design and media depictions of his homes that the Nazi regime fostered a myth of the private Hitler as peaceable homebody and good neighbor.
In the years leading up to World War II, this image was used strategically and effectively, both within Germany and abroad, to distance the dictator from his violent and cruel policies. Even after the war began, the favorable impression of the off-duty Führer playing with dogs and children did not immediately fade.
A radical makeover
Nazi mythologies about Hitler’s origins emphasized his poverty and homelessness as a young man, as well as his disdain for creature comforts.
But once Hitler became chancellor – and particularly after the royalties from Mein Kampf made him a wealthy man – he focused considerable energies on the redesign and furnishing of his residences: the Old Chancellery in Berlin; his Munich apartment; and the Berghof, his mountain home on the Obersalzberg.
The timing of these renovations in the mid-1930s coincided with Hitler’s public makeover as a statesman and diplomat, a transformation also promoted by Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda films.
The rough edges of the extreme anti-Semite and agitator of the masses were sanded away through the creation of a new, sophisticated persona that emerged in carefully crafted domestic surroundings. With silk curtains and porcelain vases, Hitler’s designers suggested an internal world that was both cultivated and peaceful.
Gerdy Troost, Hitler’s interior decorator, played an important role in conveying an image of her client as a man of taste and culture. Inspired by British design reform movements, she emphasized quality of materials and craftsmanship over showy display.
Hitler was an engaged client, and he admired her taste, although they sometimes clashed over his tendency toward the grandiose. A woman both respected and feared in Nazi Germany, Troost has been overlooked in histories written about the period. However new archival sources reveal the surprising extent of her influence over Hitler and her prominence within Nazi elite circles.
Hitler’s chalet
With views of Germany on one side of the mountain and Austria on the other, the Berghof was the most public of Hitler’s private homes, and it exerted a powerful hold on the Nazi imagination of empire.
Hitler and his publicists drew on mountain imagery from Germany’s literary and artistic movements (particularly Romanticism) to mythologize the Führer as a mystic leader who immersed himself in – and embodied – the terrible and magnificent forces of nature.
At the same time, the mountain served as a means to humanize Germany’s leader through his contact with animals as well as with children. In officially produced postcards, magazines and books, Germans consumed fantasies about an ideal domestic life rooted in the natural landscape.
‘The Führer as Animal Lover.’ Hitler feeds a deer in a photograph snapped by his offical photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann.
Heinrich Hoffmann Collection, Picture Archive, Bavarian State Library
In the expansive Lebensraum and pure mountain air, where the sun shone and blond children frolicked, the Nazis encouraged Germans to envision a blissful future in exchange for sacrifices to their pocketbooks and freedoms.
To the foreign press, a Bavarian gentleman
The rise of celebrity culture in the 1920s and 1930s created a voracious appetite for information about the daily lives of the rich and famous. Hitler’s team was quick to realize and exploit the public’s hunger, pioneering PR strategies that are commonplace today.
Journalists writing for the English-language press gobbled up the propaganda, fueling a false image of Hitler by publishing glowing stories of the Führer, even in the face of disturbing counter-realities.
On May 30, 1937 – a month after German planes bombed Guernica, Spain – The New York Times Magazine published a front-page article on Adolf Hitler’s idyllic mountain retreat.
In this admiring piece, penned by foreign correspondent Otto Tolischus, the skies were depicted not as a means of delivering destruction, but as a rarified topos of meditation, beauty and the simple life.
The article described how, surrounded by Alpine peaks, Germany’s leader communed with nature, contemplated the Reich and indulged his sweet tooth for chocolate. Hitler’s attack on Guernica and the suffering of its victims, later memorialized by Pablo Picasso, went unmentioned.
In November 1938, shortly after the annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland – and the same month as the Night of Broken Glass – Homes and Gardens published a feature titled Hitler’s Mountain Home, which credited Hitler with the design of the Berghof. Applauding his taste, the article depicted his private life as one of refinement, gentle repasts and congenial friendships.
And days before the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939, The New York Times Magazine published another enthusiastic article about the residence, one that again chronicled the Führer’s wholesome domestic life, unpretentious hospitality and love of sweets.
Life, Vogue and other widely circulated publications similarly offered readers the chance to pore over glossy photo essays of Hitler’s rooms.
But stories in the British press admiring Hitler’s gentlemanly tastes and pursuits evaporated with the start of hostilities. With German war planes bombarding the nation’s cities and towns, the Brits quickly lost interest in how Herr Hitler took his tea.
American audiences, on the other hand, were slower to admit they had been conned, which reflects the country’s broader ambivalence about involvement in another war.
During the final weeks of the war in Europe, the Berghof was bombed by the Allied Air forces and set aflame by Hitler’s departing SS troops. What survived was looted by local residents and American and French soldiers.
By 1947, the ruins had become a destination for throngs of curious tourists. Authorities were more troubled by Hitler’s loyalists, who made pilgrimages to the site to pay homage to their fallen leader. With approval from the American military, which occupied the Obersalzberg, the Bavarian government demolished what remained of the Berghof; the area was subsequently replanted with trees.
It was only in 2008 that an official sign was posted that identifies the former location of Hitler’s house. In English and German, it gives a brief history of the residence, one that shatters the widely propagated, simplistic view of its domestic function:
Hitler spent more than a third of his time in power here. Important political discussions and negotiations were conducted here and incisive decisions were made, which led to the catastrophes of the Second World War and the Holocaust, causing the death of millions.
Hitler’s successful domestic makeover – engineered by his designers and publicists – underscores the need to be far more critical of the industries that focus on home or lifestyle news, which can have enormous influence.
In recent years, Western media have fawned over Asma al-Assad, Syria’s First Lady, depicting her as a refining, domestic influence on her husband. While some of these outlets, including Vogue, have attempted to scrub online traces, the stories remain proudly posted on President Bashar al-Assad’s website.
When it comes to someone’s home, there’s often more than meets the eye.
Despina Stratigakos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(12510) "Only about 1 in 5 computer scientists are women. Rachel Murray/Getty Images for MGA Entertainment
Stereotypes about what boys and girls supposedly like aren’t hard to find.
Toy advertisements send signals that science and electronic toys are intended for boys rather than girls. Computer scientists and engineers on television shows and movies are often white men, like the guys on “The Big Bang Theory.”
But as researchers who specialize in motivation, identity and cognitive development, we think society has largely overlooked another harmful stereotype. And that is the notion that girls are less interested than boys are in STEM.
In our peer-reviewed research – published in November 2021 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – we found that these stereotypes about girls’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math – or lack thereof – are fairly widespread among young people today. We also found that these stereotypes actually have an effect on girls’ motivation and sense of belonging in computer science and engineering.
Yet, the nation is still failing to diversify computer science and engineering. Only about 1 in 5 degrees in computer science and engineering go to women.
Our research shows that societal stereotypes linking these fields with boys and men act as a barrier that keeps girls and young women away. There have been many conversations about the harm caused by stereotypes about natural talent, which assert that men are better than women at STEM. But what might be even more detrimental for girls’ motivation are stereotypes that men are more interested than women in these activities and careers. These stereotypes may give girls the sense that they don’t belong.
Probing children’s perceptions
For our study, our first step was to document whether children and adolescents believe these societal stereotypes. We surveyed 2,277 youths in grades 1-12 in 2017 and 2019 about how interested they think girls and boys are in computer science and engineering. The majority of youths reported that boys were more likely than girls to be interested in these fields. Most youths – 63% – believed that girls are less interested than boys in engineering. Only 9% believed that girls are more interested than boys in engineering. These “interest stereotypes,” if you will, were endorsed by youths from diverse backgrounds, including Black, white, Asian and Hispanic youths.
They were endorsed by kids as early as age 6, in first grade. These beliefs about gendered interests were also more common than stereotypes about ability, that boys are more talented than girls at these fields.
We also discovered that these interest stereotypes were linked to worse outcomes for girls. The more that a typical girl in our study believed in these stereotypes favoring boys, the less motivated she was in computer science and engineering. This wasn’t the case for the typical boy. The more he believed in these stereotypes, the more motivated he was.
Effects on motivation
We also did two laboratory experiments using a gold-standard random-assignment design to see whether interest stereotypes have causal effects on motivation. We told children about two activities they could try. The only difference between the activities was that one activity – one that was randomly chosen – was linked to a stereotype that girls were less interested than boys in that activity.
The other activity was not linked to such a stereotype. If children preferred one activity over the other, we could infer that the stereotype caused a difference in their preferences. We found that interest stereotypes can actually cause girls’ lower motivation for computer science activities.
Only 35% of girls chose the stereotyped activity over the nonstereotyped activity. These stereotypes – which favored boys in this case – weren’t a problem for boys, who showed no preference. There was no gender gap when there was no stereotype – a gender gap only appeared when the activity was stereotyped.
Dismantling stereotypes
Why are interest stereotypes so powerful? Interest stereotypes may make girls assume: If boys like these fields more than girls, then I won’t like these fields either. They also send a clear signal about who belongs there. A sense of belonging matters a lot for motivation, including young women in STEM fields like computer science and engineering. The lower the girls’ sense of belonging, the lower their interest.
But what if the stereotypes are true? On average, girls in the U.S. usually do report being less interested than boys in computer science and engineering.
Whether or not these cultural stereotypes are currently true, we believe they can create a vicious cycle. Girls might miss out on opportunities because of an assumption that they are not interested or should not be interested in certain STEM fields. Unless adults deliberately send girls a different message about who belongs in computer science and engineering, we as a society discourage girls from trying these activities and discovering that they like them.
But the good news is that the lack of belonging that many girls feel in certain STEM feels is not permanent. On the contrary, we think it can be changed.
There are simple ways to send kids a different message about who likes to do computer science and engineering. Parents and other adults can check their assumptions about what toys to buy girls for their birthdays or holidays, or what summer camps they should attend. Girls can be shown examples of women like Aicha Evans and Debbie Sterling – women who are changing the world through technology and enjoying themselves while doing so.
It’s not enough for girls to realize that they can do computer science and engineering. In order to change the status quo, we think it’s necessary to spread the word that many girls actually want to do these things as well.
Allison Master receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the U. S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, or other funders.
Andrew N. Meltzoff gratefully acknowledges receipt of funding from the National Science Foundation, the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Overdeck Family Foundation. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the funders.
Sapna Cheryan receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The views expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the views of these funders.
The U.S. added 263,000 nonfarm jobs in November, leaving the unemployment rate at a low 3.7%. Moreover, wages are up – with average hourly pay jumping 5.1% compared with a year earlier.
The economic rationale behind hiking rates is that it increases the cost of doing business for companies. This in turn acts as brake on the economy, which should cool inflation.
But that doesn’t appear to be happening. A closer dive into November’s jobs report reveals why.
It shows that the labor force participation rate – how many working-age Americans have a job or are seeking one – is stuck at just over 62.1%. As the report notes, that figure is “little changed” in November and has shown “little net change since early this year.” In fact, it is down 1.3 percentage points from pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
This suggests that the heating up of the labor market is being driven by supply-side issues. That is, there aren’t enough people to fill the jobs being advertised.
Companies still want to hire – as the above-expected job gains indicate. But with fewer people actively looking for work in the U.S., companies are having to go the extra yard to be attractive to job seekers. And that means offering higher wages. And higher wages – they were up 5.1% in November from a year earlier – contribute to spiraling inflation.
This puts the Fed in a very difficult position. Simply put, there is not an awful lot it can do about supply-side issues in the labor market. The main monetary tool it has to affect jobs is rate hikes, which make it more costly to do business, which should have an impact on hiring. But that only affects the demand side – that is, employers and recruitment policies.
So where does this leave the possibility of further rate hikes? Viewing this as an economist, it suggests that the Fed might be eyeing a base rate jump of more than 75 basis points on Dec. 13, rather than a softening of its policies as Chair Jerome Powell had suggested as recently as Nov. 30. Yes, this still would not ease the labor supply problem that is encouraging wage growth, but it might serve to cool the wider economy nonetheless.
The problem is, this would increase the chances of also pushing the U.S. economy into a recession – and it could be a pretty nasty recession.
Wage growth still trails behind inflation, and for one reason or another people have been opting out of the labor market. The logical assumption to make is that to make up for both these factors, American families have been dipping into their savings.
Statistics back this up. The personal saving rate – that is, the chunk of income left after paying taxes and spending money – has fallen steeply, down to 2.3% in December from 9.3% before the pandemic. In fact, it is at its lowest rate since 2005.
So, yes, employment is robust. But the money being earned is eroded by soaring inflation. Meanwhile, the safety net of savings that families might need is getting smaller.
In short, people are not prepared for the recession that might be lurking around the corner.
Edouard Wemy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(17069) "Red knots stop to feed along the Delaware shore as they migrate from the high Arctic to South America. Gregory Breese, USFWS/Flickr
A biodiversity crisis is reducing the variety of life on Earth. Under pressure from land and water pollution, development, overhunting, poaching, climate change and species invasions, approximately 1 million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction.
Since 30x30 focuses on protecting space for wild nature, many people assume it means setting swaths of land or ocean aside and keeping people out of them. But that’s not always true.
Protected area with sustainable use of natural resources
Many countries’ 30x30 conservation pledges are likely to include areas such as forests and grasslands that are open for recreation, logging, livestock grazing and other uses.
Scientists agree that protected areas need to include a large variety of species, ecosystems and habitats that the 30x30 initiative aims to conserve. There are many ways to choose and prioritize new areas for protection. Criteria can include the species, habitats and ecosystems that an area contains; its connections to other protected areas; how large and intact an area is; and the benefits it provides to people who live in, near and far from it.
Over 58% of our planet’s land and 41% of its oceans are already under moderate to intense human pressure. This means that most newly protected areas will effectively be works in progress, with restoration projects to help species recover, improve habitat quality and make ecosystems healthier.
Ryan Davis, Pennsylvania forest program manager with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, explains options for stabilizing stream banks that have become badly eroded.
Another 40% of land and 10% of oceans have experienced relatively low impacts from human activities. Terrestrial ecosystems with the lowest human footprints include tundra, boreal forests and deserts. At the other extreme, tropical, subtropical and temperate forests are at the highest risk.
It isn’t always possible to protect large areas. Some scientists argue that small areas can still successfully protect species, but others disagree. In our view, what ultimately matters is how multiple protected areas are connected and how close they are to each other.
Connections can develop naturally, like the flyways that migrating birds use to travel between continents. Or they can be structures built by humans, such as wildlife bridges over highways. Connecting protected areas is important because it promotes genetic diversity and makes it possible for species to move in response to climate change and other threats.
Given all these factors, selecting protected areas can get complicated. Based on our research, we think that a holistic approach can make 30x30 feasible and effective. It has three parts.
First, protected areas should meet both conservation needs and human needs. Second, in creating newly protected areas, researchers and managers should consider how they will interact with adjacent areas. Third, researchers and officials should assess how newly protected areas will interact with areas far away – including in other countries.
This approach is guided by the metacoupling framework, which is an integrated way to study and manage human-nature interactions within and between different places. It recognizes that human and natural systems in a given place can be affected for better or worse by people, policies and markets both nearby and far away.
At Wolong Nature Reserve in southwestern China, one of us, Jack Liu, has worked with Chinese collaborators to understand and manage human-nature interactions in ways that support the recovery of a global wildlife icon – giant pandas. Wolong, which is now part of China’s Giant Panda National Park, was one of the first and largest panda reserves in China, and also houses numerous other rare animals and plants. It is also home to almost 6,000 people.
Ecologist Jianguo ‘Jack’ Liu, left, speaks with a resident in Wolong, China, about pressures on panda habitat.
Michigan State University, CC BY-ND
Forest is an important part of panda habitat, but over time the human population in Wolong grew and needed more resources, such as wood for cooking and heating or to make goods for visiting tourists. In a 2001 study, our team showed that panda habitat in Wolong declined faster after the reserve was established in 1975 than it had before that time. Increasing demand for wood was degrading and fragmenting the forest and negatively affected panda population numbers.
To reverse this trend, our team worked with the Chinese government to provide more financial support to the local community in the early 2000s. This increased household incomes and reduced the need to harvest wood.
Taking a broad geographic view of the pandas’ situation helped to produce a positive outcome. Recognizing that panda habitat was being affected not just by human-nature interactions inside Wolong but also by interactions between Wolong and adjacent and distant places showed that conservation subsidies from the faraway central government in Beijing could improve protection for Wolong forests.
In 2016 the International Union for Conservation of Nature downlisted and reclassified giant pandas from endangered to vulnerable. Today there are an estimated 1,800 giant pandas in the wild, thanks partly to government subsidies that helped strike a balance between humans’ needs and those of pandas.
All protected areas are influenced by human actions both nearby and far away. We believe that creating and managing protected areas using a holistic metacoupling approach will make it easier to achieve the 30x30 goal and make sound decisions that sustain nature and human well-being around the world.
Veronica Frans receives funding from the National Science Foundation.
Jianguo "Jack" Liu receives funding from National Science Foundation and Michiga AgBioResearch.
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string(13144) "People walk by the campus of Yeshiva University in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Disputes over religious freedom and LGBTQ rights in the United States have led to some of the most high-profile judicial controversies – with 2022 is no exception. For example, the Supreme Court will hear arguments Dec. 5, 2022, about whether a designer can refuse to create wedding websites for same-sex couples; a ruling is likely in late June 2023.
Lately, many of these controversies have begun in educational settings, both in K-12 schools and on college campuses. As a professor of education law who often writes about First Amendment issues in schools, I see these cases, which are trying to balance tensions between fundamental rights, as potentially shaping new precedents.
Cases at Yeshiva University, a private Orthodox Jewish school in New York City, and Seattle Pacific University, a small Christian school, have made headlines, but they are not the only examples. Similar concerns arose at Catholic high schools in Indiana, where courts upheld the dismissals of employees in same-sex marriages, as well as Samford University in Alabama, where campus officials denied a student request to form a club for law students who are LGBTQ.
Stamp of approval
The dispute at Yeshiva University emerged when officials rejected the YU Pride Alliance’s request for official recognition, saying it was inconsistent with the school’s religious values.
The Pride Alliance filed suit alleging that the university violated a provision of the New York City Human Rights Law, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. After a state trial court rejected Yeshiva’s defense that it should be exempt because it is a religious institution, the school appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted a brief stay of the order on Sept. 9, 2022.
Five days later, however, the Supreme Court vacated the stay: in other words, the justices declined to block the order that Yeshiva officials recognize the club.
The court did not address the merits of the claims, but told university officials that they must exhaust other avenues of appeal in state courts before they can ask the Supreme Court to decide. Still, four justices dissented, their concern about the case clear.
“The First Amendment guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion, and if that provision means anything, it prohibits a State from enforcing its own preferred interpretation of Holy Scripture,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissent. Joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, Alito added, “Yet that is exactly what New York has done.”
Rather than comply with the order, Yeshiva’s administration suspended all student clubs while it continued to fight the case. It soon offered its own official club, saying it was for LGBTQ students “striving to live authentic Torah lives.” The dispute persists, however, because the Pride Alliance continues to seek recognition.
A 2010 Supreme Court case, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, provides useful precedent as to student groups. In a 5-4 decision, the justices decided that officials in a public law school in California could implement a policy requiring a religious student group to admit “all comers,” meaning all who were interested, even if they disagreed with its core beliefs.
Now, the Yeshiva and Samford disputes are testing the limits of that precedent, albeit with a twist. While the 2010 case involved the actions of student groups, these controversies involve employers’ religious beliefs and actions, which are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Hiring and firing
The second set of recent cases involves employment – specifically, whether officials in faith-based high schools can fire staff for marriages that violate their beliefs.
In three separate cases from Indiana, courts have upheld the terminations of a supervisory guidance counselor, another guidance counselor and a teacher at Roman Catholic high schools who married same-sex spouses.
The Seventh Circuit court,
the Supreme Court of Indiana and a federal trial court largely based their judgments on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on a variety of personal characteristics, including race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. In 2020’s Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court interpreted Title VII as extending protection against employment discrimination to individuals who are gay and transgender.
Most notably for these controversies, though, Title VII grants far-reaching exceptions for faith-based employers. Usually referred to as the “ministerial exception,” this provision allows officials in religious institutions to dismiss individuals who do not comply with the dictates of the employer’s faith, or to not hire them in the first place.
To be excluded from the reach of Title VII, employees do not need to serve in formal, ordained ministerial positions. Still, employers must prove that those employees’ duties are integrally related to institutional spiritual missions. In the Indiana cases, courts decided that school officials had met that requirement.
A group of students, faculty and staff have sued leaders of Seattle Pacific’s board of trustees over an employment policy they say is discriminatory.
AP Photo/Chris Grygiel
A similar kind of dispute arose at Seattle Pacific University in Washington state, where employees and students challenged a campus policy banning employees from same-sex marriages. In the wake of the discrimination claim filed against campus officials, the school filed its own case to prevent the state attorney general’s investigation into whether the charges have merit. A federal trial court rejected that attempt, and the investigation continues.
Although it has not yet led to litigation, a like controversy in Pennsylvania reached a different outcome, revealing a different perspective about the rights of LGBTQ employees on a campus. Controversy arose in May 2022 when officials at Eastern College, which is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA, reversed their policy of not hiring or retaining employees who are LGBTQ, adding sexual orientation to their employment nondiscrimination policy. As a result, Eastern put its membership in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities in jeopardy because council officials said members’ policies should align with “the historic Christian view of marriage.”
The sensitive issues underlying these disputes go to the very heart of what it means to be human: how individuals and organizations can live in ways that are consistent with their personal values and needs, and how to balance religious freedom with freedom from discrimination. These controversies, bear watching closely, I believe, because they are likely to have a profound impact on the shape of American society’s values, and how they play out in educating the next generation.
Charles J. Russo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(18914) "Dead men do tell tales through their physical remains. AP Photo/Francesco Bellini
The previous pandemics to which people often compare COVID-19 – the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Black Death bubonic plague (1342-1353), the Justinian plague (541-542) – don’t seem that long ago to archaeologists. We’re used to thinking about people who lived many centuries or even millennia ago. Evidence found directly on skeletons shows that infectious diseases have been with us since our beginnings as a species.
Bioarchaeologistslikeus analyze skeletons to reveal more about how infectious diseases originated and spread in ancient times.
How did aspects of early people’s social behavior allow diseases to flourish? How did people try to care for the sick? How did individuals and entire societies modify behaviors to protect themselves and others?
Knowing these things might help scientists understand why COVID-19 has wreaked such global devastation and what needs to be put in place before the next pandemic.
These round lesions are pathognomonic signs of syphilis.
Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
Clues about illnesses long ago
How can bioarchaeologists possibly know these things, especially for early cultures that left no written record? Even in literate societies, poorer and marginalized segments were rarely written about.
In most archaeological settings, all that remains of our ancestors is the skeleton.
Tuberculosis leaves telltale markings in the spine.Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
For some infectious diseases, like syphilis, tuberculosis and leprosy, the location, characteristics and distribution of marks on a skeleton’s bones can serve as distinctive “pathognomonic” indicators of the infection.
Most skeletal signs of disease are non-specific, though, meaning bioarchaeologists today can tell an individual was sick, but not with what disease. Some diseases never affect the skeleton at all, including plague and viral infections like HIV and COVID-19. And diseases that kill quickly don’t have enough time to leave a mark on victims’ bones.
To uncover evidence of specific diseases beyond obvious bone changes, bioarchaeologists use a variety of methods, often with the help of other specialists, like geneticists or parasitologists. For instance, analyzing soil collected in a grave from around a person’s pelvis can reveal the remains of intestinal parasites, such as tapeworms and round worms. Genetic analyses can also identify the DNA of infectious pathogens still clinging to ancient bones and teeth.
Bioarchaeologists can also estimate age at death based on how developed a youngster’s teeth and bones are, or how much an adult’s skeleton has degenerated over its lifespan. Then demographers help us draw age profiles for populations that died in epidemics. Most infectious diseases disproportionately affect those with the weakest immune systems, usually the very young and very old.
Ground penetrating radar shows mass graves from the small Aboriginal settlement of Cherbourg in Australia, where 490 out of 500 people were struck down by the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, with about 90 deaths.
Kelsey Lowe, CC BY-ND
We can find out what infections were around in the past through our ancestors’ remains, but what does this tell us about the bigger picture of the origin and evolution of infections? Archaeological clues can help researchers reconstruct aspects of socioeconomic organization, environment and technology. And we can study how variations in these risk factors caused diseases to vary across time, in different areas of the world and even among people living in the same societies.
How infectious disease got its first foothold
Human biology affects culture in complex ways. Culture influences biology, too, although it can be hard for our bodies to keep up with rapid cultural changes. For example, in the 20th century, highly processed fast food replaced a more balanced and healthy diet for many. Because the human body evolved and was designed for a different world, this dietary switch resulted in a rise in diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
From a paleoepidemiological perspective, the most significant event in our species’ history was the adoption of farming. Agriculture arose independently in several places around the world beginning around 12,000 years ago.
Prior to this change, people lived as hunter-gatherers, with dogs as their only animal companions. They were very active and had a well balanced, varied diet that was high in protein and fiber and low in calories and fat. These small groups experienced parasites, bacterial infections and injuries while hunting wild animals and occasionally fighting with one another. They also had to deal with dental problems, including extreme wear, plaque and periodontal disease.
A healed fracture of the lower leg bones from a person buried in Roman Winchester, England.Charlotte Roberts, CC BY-ND
One thing hunter-gatherers didn’t need to worry much about, however, was virulent infectious diseases that could move quickly from person to person throughout a large geographic region. Pathogens like the influenza virus were not able to effectively spread or even be maintained by small, mobile, and socially isolated populations.
The advent of agriculture resulted in larger, sedentary populations of people living in close proximity. New diseases could flourish in this new environment. The transition to agriculture was characterized by high childhood mortality, in which approximately 30% or more of children died before the age of 5.
And for the first time in an evolutionary history spanning millions of years, different species of mammals and birds became intimate neighbors. Once people began to live with newly domesticated animals, they were brought into the life cycle of a new group of diseases – called zoonoses – that previously had been limited to wild animals but could now jump into human beings.
Add to all this the stresses of poor sanitation and a deficient diet, as well as increased connections between distant communities through migration and trade especially between urban communities, and epidemics of infectious disease were able to take hold for the first time.
Globalization of disease
Later events in human history also resulted in major epidemiological transitions related to disease.
For more than 10,000 years, the people of Europe, the Middle East and Asia evolved along with particular zoonoses in their local environments. The animals people were in contact with varied from place to place. As people lived alongside particular animal species over long periods of time, a symbiosis could develop – as well as immune resistance to local zoonoses.
At the beginning of modern history, people from European empires also began traveling across the globe, taking with them a suite of “Old World” diseases that were devastating for groups who hadn’t evolved alongside them. Indigenous populations in Australia, the Pacific and the Americas had no biological familiarity with these new pathogens. Without immunity, one epidemic after another ravaged these groups. Mortality estimates range between 60-90%.
This skull of a person who lived more than 2,600 years ago in Peru shows evidence of a surgery, maybe to treat a head wound.
Other evidence shows that people have often done their best to protect others, as well as themselves, from disease. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the English village of Eyam, which made a self-sacrificing decision to isolate itself to prevent further spread of a plague from London in 1665.
In other eras, people with tuberculosis were placed in sanatoria, people with leprosy were admitted to specialized hospitals or segregated on islands or into remote areas, and urban dwellers fled cities when plagues came.
As the world faces yet another pandemic, the archaeological and historical record are reminders that people have lived with infectious disease for millennia. Pathogens have helped shape civilization, and humans have been resilient in the face of such crises.
Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Charlotte Roberts and Gabriel D. Wrobel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
