313 pairs of brothers and 296 pairs of sisters were compared by one or both parents in a postal questionnaire. For 495 pairs independent questionnaires were completed by father and mother, and agreement between parents was good.

There was a marked tendency for the first-born child to be rated as less fond of cuddling; he was also easier to train, worked harder at school, set himself higher standards, and was more serious, methodical, law-abiding, tidy and less impulsive; he learned to talk and read at a younger age and was rated as having more natural ability at schoolwork. These three groups of first-born attributes were relatively independent; for instance, even the first-born with less ability at schoolwork were given more responsibility at school. In the 152 pairs which did not contain a first-born, little birth order effect could be found, whether or not the elder was the eldest of his or her sex.

There was a slight tendency for the broader, fatter and more muscular child to be less nervous and highly strung, but otherwise differences in physique were not related to differences in behaviour. Abilities at schoolwork, games, music and painting were not related. Tendency to anxiety and depression was related to lack of sociability; to stubbornness and lack of practicality; to angryness but not the bottling up of anger; to level of aspiration but not the possession of abilities or good looks. These relations of anxiety and depression in a normal sample closely parallel the items which distinguish psychiatric patients from their healthy siblings.

This study analyses factors associated with the incidence of sterilization regret in the four south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Using data from the National Family Health Surveys, in all four states the incidence of regret was found to be less than 10% and the factors significantly associated with it were child loss experience and quality of services. Hence, there is a need to improve the quality of services, both in terms of counselling and service provision, and women need to be counselled about the permanent nature of sterilization in order to avoid future regret.

This article, based on retrospective survey data, examines the fertility performance of third-order parity women in Korea, following births of specified sexes of children already born. Although the study indicates that additional births and spacing of children after the third birth are strongly influenced by the sex composition of the first three children, this influence becomes apparent only after the introduction of a vigorous national family planning programme. It seems that both the number of sons and the sequence of sons and daughters play an important role in determining subsequent fertility. More than twice as great a proportion of third-parity women proceeded to the fourth parity if the women had three daughters rather than three sons.

Dowry practice, women’s autonomy to use dowry (‘dowry autonomy’) and the association of these with domestic violence were examined among young married women in India. Data were taken from the ‘Youth in India: Situation and Needs Study’ carried out in six Indian states during 2006–07. A total of 13,912 women aged 15–24 years were included in the study. About three-quarters of the women reported receiving a dowry at their marriage, and about 66% reported having the ability to exercise autonomy over the use of it – ‘dowry autonomy’. Dowry given without ‘dowry autonomy’ was found to have had no protective value against young women experiencing physical domestic violence in India. While women’s participation in paid employment increased the odds of them experiencing physical domestic violence, women’s education and marrying after the age of 18 years reduced the likelihood of experiencing physical domestic violence.

Medical Officer of Health reports for London boroughs, 1900–19, are analysed to determine the incidence of neonatal breast-feeding, duration of lactation, reasons for early supplementation and premature weaning, and their relationship with infant mortality. In a sample of 222,989 infants, breast-feeding rates were very high. Over 90% were breast-fed in the first month, almost 80% at 3 months, and over 70% at 6 months. The poorest boroughs had the highest rates of neonatal breast-feeding, but also a higher incidence of early supplementation and premature weaning. There was a significant positive correlation between breast-feeding and infant mortality due to poor maternal diet and health, poor nutritional quality of supplementary and substitute foods, and the use of an unhygienic feeding bottle. Energetic campaigns to counteract these problems probably contributed to the fall of infant mortality in this period.

The data in this paper are drawn from interviews with a probability sample of 2652 once-married women under the age of 60 currently living with their husbands in 1971 in metropolitan Melbourne. Although drawing from other material from the 2½ hr interviews the discussion concentrates upon the family size ideals of these wives. In addition to the customary measures of ideal family size, new measures of the upper and lower limits of acceptable family size are described, together with the reactions of the whole sample to a wide range of specified family sizes and the reasons for accepting or rejecting them. It is shown that the eventual achievement of zero population growth will almost certainly depend upon the two-child family becoming the norm for the great majority of couples, since childless or one-child marriages are desired by only 2% of couples. Currently, however, 20% of wives consider two-child families to be undesirably small. The marked religious, country of origin and educational differentials in acceptance of the two-child family are also discussed.

Delivery records from Tanzanian hospitals reveal a marked seasonality of births in areas with holoendemic malaria. Accepted explanations of variations in conception rate are inadequate to account for these seasonal variations. The magnitude of the variation increases with higher parity but it has decreased over the past decade. The differences are related to different activity patterns of younger and older women, and to recent changes in the rural economy. Conception rate has a negative association with rainfall 4 months earlier; birth seasonality is therefore considered in relation to the agricultural cycle. While seasonal variations in sexual activity and pregnancy loss may be contributory factors, female stress due to the combination of malarial infection and physical exhaustion emerges as the major cause of seasonally depressed fecundity in areas with holoendemic malaria.

This study examined 28 anthropometrical and physiological traits in 107 married couples living in the province of Biscay (Basque Country, Spain). The aim was to verify the existence of a phenotypic and/or social preference when choosing a mate. For this, correlations between pairs of spouses were estimated by maximum likelihood, and a model of familial transmission (path analysis) was applied in order to test if social homogamy between mates existed. The results provide significant evidence of phenotypic as well as social homogamy in several of the studied traits. Even if an assortment existed when choosing a mate for bony traits such as height, the effect of cohabitation cannot be discounted as the main causal factor for the high phenotypic resemblance observed between spouses for body composition traits. In addition, with the social homogeneity of the studied sample, significant evidence of the existence of social homogamy between mates was only found for 20% of the studied variables.

Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore genetic contributions to disparities in health were developed using in-depth qualitative interviews with editorial staff from nineteen genetics journals, focusing on the methodological and conceptual mechanisms required to make race/ethnicity a genetic variable. As such, these analyses explore how and why race/ethnicity comes to be used in the context of genetic research, set against the background of continuing critiques from anthropology and related human sciences that focus on the social construction, structural correlates and limited genetic validity of racial/ethnic categories. The analyses demonstrate how these critiques have failed to engage geneticists, and how geneticists use a range of essentially cultural devices to protect and separate their use of race/ethnicity as a genetic construct from its use as a societal and social science resource. Given its multidisciplinary, biosocial nature and the cultural gaze of its ethnographic methodologies, anthropology is well placed to explore the cultural separation of science and society, and of natural and social science disciplines. Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore disparities in health suggest that moving beyond genetic explanations of innate difference might benefit from a more even-handed critique of how both the natural and social sciences tend to essentialize selective elements of race/ethnicity. Drawing on the example of HIV/AIDS, this paper demonstrates how public health has been undermined by the use of race/ethnicity as an analytical variable, both as a cipher for innate genetic differences in susceptibility and response to treatment, and in its use to identify ‘core groups’ at greater risk of becoming infected and infecting others. Clearly, a tendency for biological reductionism can place many biomedical issues beyond the scope of public health interventions, while socio-cultural essentialization has tended to stigmatize ‘unhealthy behaviours’ and the communities where these are more prevalent.

In a retrospective study, the impact of breast-feeding on the survival probabilities of children born to women in hospitals in Cairo, Egypt, is estimated. The analysis shows that early cessation of breastfeeding is associated with higher mortality and the effects are more severe the lower the education level of the mother.

The average age at the time of operation was 38 years for husbands and about 35 years for wives. Most of the men had, at least, thedesired number of living children before they underwent vasectomy. Theaverage number of living children at the time of operation was 3·3. About88 % of the men were white. About 38% were Catholics, 28 % Protestant and 18% Jewish. The men were highly educated; over 17% had apost-graduate degree. Nearly 60% were engaged in professional, managerial or technical occupations. This points to superiority of vasectomized men in their economic and educational position. Public media sources played the most important role in referring persons for vasectomy. About 57% of the men had learned through articles published in newspapers or magazines. Large family size and non-availability of an ideal contraceptive were the most important reasons for seeking vasectomy.

Of 40 women who had abortions between 20 and 24 weeks gestation and had felt fetal movements, eleven had a history of significant menstrual irregularity, six had changed their minds about an initially welcome pregnancy, five had been told that they were not pregnant, and five had either been refused by the NHS or were unable to get sympathetic advice at an earlier stage. In only fourteen cases was ‘wishful thinking’ or an unrealistic attitude to the possibility of pregnancy an important cause.

Twenty-five of the women were followed-up at a minimum of 3 months after their abortion. Five reported feeling depressed because of their abortion but none of them had required specialist advice, and only one had time off work or school for this reason.

A study has been made from parish records of the patterns of marital movement from 1837 to the present day in the Otmoor region of Oxfordshire. The social classes of brides and grooms have been taken into account.

It is shown that the spatial mobility of the different classes is markedly different, and in the earlier part of the period this difference is evident even on a very local scale. Social class distributions themselves vary according to population size and this variation affects the nature of marital exchange between the different populations in the area. Spatially exogamous as compared with endogamous grooms, however, do not appear to differ in their preferences for the social class of brides. There is marked assortative marriage for social class in Classes II and IV but both brides and grooms of Class III, especially in the present century, choose their partners more or less randomly with respect to social class.

In England and Wales in 1938–68 the sex ratio of children liveborn or stillborn to women aged 45+ years was lower than the sex ratio among children born to women at any other age. This strengthens the suggestion that the high sex ratio reported by Takahashi among children born to elderly women in Japan is a spurious consequence of false registration.

In fertility surveys often women (and sometimes men) are asked their fertility desires, i.e. whether they want a/nother birth or not. Some respond that they are undecided. This study examines whether these persons are more like those who say they want more births or like those who say they want no more births. Data on married men and women in 29 Demographic and Health Surveys with sample sizes ranging from 300 to 3000 are used. A logistic regression equation is estimated within each country for those with known desires and then used to classify each person who was undecided. In all sub-Saharan African countries (n=20) and for both sexes, 50% or more of the undecided persons are classified as wanting more children (with one exception of wives in Kenya). By contrast in all five Latin American countries for both sexes less than 50% of the undecided were classified in the ‘want more’ group (with an exception of husbands in the Dominican Republic). Generally, the undecided tend to be classified the same as the majority among those in the survey with stated desires.

Human water contact patterns were studied in two resettlement communities at the Oyan Reservoir in south-west Nigeria in all four seasons in 1991 and 1992. Water contact was most intensive in the afternoon and in the hot dry season, but different types of activities exhibited different daily and seasonal patterns. Both communities were highly endemic for urinary schistosomiasis. However, knowledge regarding schistosomiasis transmission was very limited and the infection was, in spite of a very high frequency of blood in the urine, not considered a major public health problem. Most water contacts were of either a recreational (swimming, bathing) or economic (fishing) nature, and age- and sex-related patterns were evident. The overall level of exposure peaked in the 10–14 years age group but water contact of an economic nature peaked in the 20–39 years age group. Females had generally more water contact than males.

In Afghanistan, acute respiratory infection (ARI) is a leading cause of under-five mortality. Previous studies on the effects of cooking fuel on ARI have only looked at the types of cooking fuel, and not the effects of the location of the cooking place. The present study aimed to assess the effects of fuel type and place of cooking on the prevalence of ARI among under-five children in Afghanistan. Descriptive statistics and multilevel logistic regression analysis were performed for 31,063 children using data from the first round of the Afghanistan Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2015. Overall, 13% of the children suffered from ARI symptoms in the 2 weeks before the survey, but this varied widely across the country. The multilevel analysis showed that, compared with households using clean cooking fuel in a separate building or outside, households using clean cooking fuel within the house and without a separate kitchen had a 32% lower risk [95% confidence interval (CI)=0.51–0.91] of having under-five children with ARI, and those using clean fuel in a separate kitchen in the house had a 17% lower risk (95% CI=0.67–1.03). On the other hand, households using polluting cooking fuel in the house without a kitchen had a 14% (95% CI=0.91–1.44) higher risk of having under-five children with ARI, and those using polluting cooking fuel in the house with a separate kitchen had a 5% (95% CI=0.85–1.30) higher risk, after adjusting for other covariates. The findings indicate that type of cooking fuel is not the only issue affecting ARI in children. Place of cooking (in a house with or without a separate kitchen versus outside) also affects the risk of ARI among under-five children. The study also found that mother’s education and occupational status, community poverty and ethnicity are other important factors affecting the prevalence of ARI in under-five children in Afghanistan.

The study analysed the HIV/AIDS situation in Zambia six years after the onset of mass campaigns of Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC). The analysis was based on data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted in 2001, 2007 and 2013. Results show that HIV prevalence among men aged 15–29 (the target group for VMMC) did not decrease over the period, despite a decline in HIV prevalence among women of the same age group (most of their partners). Correlations between male circumcision and HIV prevalence were positive for a variety of socioeconomic groups (urban residence, province of residence, level of education, ethnicity). In a multivariate analysis, based on the 2013 DHS survey, circumcised men were found to have the same level of infection as uncircumcised men, after controlling for age, sexual behaviour and socioeconomic status. Lastly, circumcised men tended to have somewhat riskier sexual behaviour than uncircumcised men. This study, based on large representative samples of the Zambian population, questions the current strategy of mass circumcision campaigns in southern and eastern Africa.

This study reports an ecologic analysis of the relationship between mean birth weight (MBW) and nutritional, medical and social variables, using 1982 data for 47 prefectures in Japan.

Correlation analysis showed that variables that correlated significantly with MBW were mean temperature (r=0·63), total calorie intake (r=0·56), and body mass index of women (r=0·60). It is concluded that the MBW level in a given community represents the long and short term nutritional condition of mothers, and that the level may follow Bergman’s law: ‘In the same species, the body size of an animal increases along with latitude; that is, the lower the temperature, the larger the body size’.

Causality for the seasonality of human births, which affects populations wordwide, has been a profound mystery for nearly two centuries. Most explanations for seasonality fail because of inconsistent global application. In two previous studies, Cummings (2002, 2003) hypothesized that human reproduction has been responsive to changes in both seasonal environmental light intensity (surface luminosity) and photoperiod. Except at higher latitudes, photoperiod is of secondary importance to that of environmental light intensity. Because of a lack of data, the presence or lack of cloud cover is used as a general proxy for environmental light intensity. These studies show a positive correlation between conceptual seasonality and cloud cover on a worldwide basis, and propose that there is a delay between exposure to increased light and the onset of conceptions. This delay is three months at higher latitudes and one to two months for lower latitudes. Both studies suggest that an excellent means of hypothesis confirmation would be to provide one or more examples of how a seasonal change in cloud cover might alter the number of conceptions in subsequent months. The present study tests this hypothesis. The percentage of possible sunshine and averaged sunshine hours are used to investigate their influence on seasonality of births in Germany and the Netherlands. The evidence shows that a seasonal change in environmental light intensity preceded a change in the peak months for conceptions in Germany and the Netherlands. Although secondary influences are possible, the primary reason for this transition in peak conceptual months seems to be related to the seasonal changes in environmental light intensity for both countries. Although this transitional relationship was predicted in Cummings (2002, 2003), further research is required, especially with regard to more precise measurements of environmental light intensity and its physiological effect on the human endocrine system.