Traumatic Stress, Ecological Contingency, and Sexual Behavior: Antecedents and Effects of Sexual Precociousness, Sexual Mobility, and Adolescent Childbearing in Antigua

Previous studies try to account for variance in adolescent sexual precociousness, sexual mobility, and childbearing by reference either to sociological risk factors (e.g., poverty, social class, opportunities for sexual activity, or the absence of constraints on sexual activity) or to an evolved, domain-specific cognitive mechanism. However, these forms of behavioral variation may reflect an evolved mental mechanism that creates behavioral plasticity and adaptability by assigning emotional weights to choice alternatives in all behavioral domains. Because it should act as a selective mechanism for choice alternatives, this emotional mechanism should create enhanced ability to avoid predation (social exploitation) and to obtain access to resources, given the properties of specific environments. Sexual precociousness, sexual mobility, and childbearing thus should be determined by ecological contingencies that bear on how girls may best empower themselves. The findings of the present study show no effect for sociological and evolutionary psychology predictors. Instead, they reveal that Antiguan girls who experienced exploitative childhood environments bore more children during adolescence than other girls, if they grew up when childbearing optimized their adult material well being. However, they went further in school than other girls, when educational attainment optimized their adult material well being. What we now characterize as stress-induced morbidity thus may consist of adaptive responses to environments in which children find themselves subject to predation and denial of access to resources. Stress, Ecological Contingency, and Sexual Behavior 2 This article reports a test of the hypothesis that adolescent sexual precociousness, sexual mobility, and childbearing are functions of ecological contingencies that bear on how girls may best empower themselves. Sociologists try to account for variance in sexual precociousness, sexual mobility, and childbearing by reference to poverty, social class, opportunities for sexual activity, the absence of constraints on sexual activity, and drug use (e.g., DeLameter 1987, Jessor, Costa, Jessor, and Donovan 1983, Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, and Kolata 1994, Laumann and Gagnon 1995). Evolutionary psychologists, by contrast, try to account for variance in sexual precociousness, sexual mobility, and childbearing by reference to one or another evolved domain-specific cognitive mechanism. The explanations of evolutionary psychologists focus on two configurations of sexual behavior, which correspond to the popular distinction between good girls and bad (i.e., promiscuous) ones (e.g., Thiessen 1994). Good girls start sexual activity relatively late, have few sexual partners, and bear relatively few children. Bad girls start sexual activity relatively early, have many sexual partners, and bear many children. Gangestad and Simpson (1990) offer evidence consistent with a frequency-dependent model that postulates two genotypes for restrictive and unrestrictive sexual variants. Draper and Harpending (1982, 1988) propose a mechanism which relies on either responses to father-absent rearing during an early sensitive learning period (ages 1-5 years), or perceptions of father-absent rearing through messages sent by the mother. In the Conclusion of this paper, I discuss how well Gangestad and Simpson’s model fits the findings reported here. Tests reported below control for measures of social class, poverty, opportunities for sexual activities, constraints on sexual activity, father absence in early childhood, and perceptions of father absence as mediated by the mother. A THEORY OF CULTURAL DYNAMICS The hypothesis tested here comes from a theory of cultural dynamics (e.g., Handwerker 1989a,b, 1993b; 2001, 2002) which lies at the intersection of behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology. Whereas evolutionary psychology’s research agenda focuses on domain-specific, panhuman cognitive mechanisms that evolved in a remote past, human behavioral ecology’s research agenda focuses on behavioral plasticity and adaptability in the contemporary world, and takes for granted the evolved mental mechanism or mechanisms which make that plasticity possible (Smith 2000; Smith, Borgerhoff Mulder, and Hill 2001a,b). In contrast to both these approaches, the theory of cultural dynamics posits developmentally plastic (see Belsky, Steinberg and Draper 1991; Perry 1997; Kolb and Whishaw 1998; Kolb et al. 1998; Spear 2000), domain-independent mental mechanisms that bear on all behavioral and cognitive domains and thus produce plasticity and adaptability across all aspects of culture. The ways in which our brains store and process sensory entail that individually unique life trajectories yield individually unique people whose choices exert control over their lives. Critically important sensory input comes to us in the form of other people’s behavior, however. Our cognitive and behavioral response to that input thus reflects our prior life history and the personal configuration of culture (cognition and behavior) that our brains constructed from that history of experience. Our behavioral responses elicit complementary cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses from others, which we call social interaction. Other people influence us, and so constrain what we think and do, by means of their behavior – by what they do or don’t do, by the circumstances of their life, as well as by their immediate responses to our responses; we influence others likewise. By virtue of the sensory input it generates, social interaction thus reciprocally produces evolution in the personal cultures we use to live our lives. Stress, Ecological Contingency, and Sexual Behavior 3 The recurrent, patterned behavior that characterizes a culture exhibits the properties of a thing because recurrent behavior constitutes an environment in which we carry out daily activities, which elicits cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. In eliciting these responses, recurrent, patterned behavior thus elicits evolution in the personal configuration of culture (cognition and behavior) that our mind uses to produce personal cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to future sensory input. Certain forms of recurrent, patterned behavior (e.g., those that produce childhood traumatic stress) may induce specific, lifelong changes in how our minds work and thus in the behavioral trajectory of our lives. Recurrent, patterned behavior entails that people with whom we interact make patterned choices from among the alternatives they see. Patterned choices come from the application of specific criteria to the choice alternatives provided by sensory input. Our minds rationalize recurrent, patterned responses in the form of domain-specific theories, models, or schemas, which consist of assumptions about the nature, components, and organization of the world of sensory experience. These processes reflect the operation of two developmentally plastic and domainindependent, evolved mechanisms. One, a dimension of intelligence, generates random (i.e., unexpected) conceptual and behavioral variation or novelty and, thus, produces choice alternatives. The other, a dimension of our stress response, assigns emotional weights to choice alternatives. These emotional weights, which in consciousness appear rationalized as costs and benefits, determine the probability that specific alternatives will be chosen. Hence, they constitute a selective mechanism responsible for the production of new or the maintenance or modification of preexisting patterns of behavior, within the constraints of historically and regionally specific cultural environments. Recurrent, patterned behavior and shared schemas (cultures) thus should emerge around ideas or ways of acting that optimize or improve resource access in historically and regionally specific cultural environments. This implies that cultures may not correspond with ethnicity and raises the possibility, as Sapir (1932) claimed, that we all embody multiple cultures. In this framework, alternative ideas and ways of acting that place one in danger constitute "errors." Selection eliminates errors (including ideas and behavior that conflict) and supports ideas and behavior that support each other. Thus, behavioral patterns that optimize or improve resource access should generate cultural norms that rationalize and justify them. Similarly, new ideas that optimize or improve resource access should generate consistent behavioral patterns. Selection applied to choice alternatives with equivalent consequences yields cultural variation; as the consequences of choice become subject to increasingly sharp selective pressures, cultures exhibit increasing levels of uniformity. Power is the ability to influence or control the behavior and beliefs of others even without their consent. Power accrues to any individual or organization that one must go through to in order to access resources, insofar as the importance of the resources grows or the number of resource seekers increases. As power inequalities grow, gatekeepers can optimize or improve their own resource access by exploiting resource seekers. Resource seekers, by contrast, can optimize or improve resource access by searching for alternative channels. Power inequalities decrease as the number of alternative resource access channels grows. Power relationships thus dictate resource accessibility and reliability. Because the effect of the selection mechanism enhances an organism’s ability to avoid predation (social exploitation) and to obtain access to resources, power equalities should elicit good treatment for both parties; power inequalities, by contrast, should elicit exploitative and coercive behavior on the part of those who hold the balance of power. People who grow up in such traumatic/violent (exploitative) cultural environments should learn to be highly sensitive to power relations, respond quickly and strongly when others attempt to take advantage of them and, to minimize the chance of further exploitation, search harder than others for ways to avoid dependency. In such environments, women can use Stress, Ecological Contingency, and Sexual Behavior 4 their sexuality and childbearing capacity as resources and, thus, as a means to protect if not also to empower themselves. Moving from partner to partner minimizes a woman’s dependency on men. In the absence of alternatives, high birth rates may provide her material support, and independence from men, from middle age on. Earlier publications tested four theoretical implications. First, if everyone embodies many cultures, we should find that many cultures cross-cut ethnic identity labels (e.g. Puerto Rican). Although some shared ways of thinking and acting (cultures) are captured by such social identity labels (e.g., Gannotti and Handwerker 2002), Handwerker (2001, 2002), Handwerker and Wozniak (1997), Wozniak (2001), and Fuentes (2001) document cultures of violence, affection, motherhood, and parent-teacher cooperation which do not correspond to conventional class, race, or ethnic labels. Second, if (as envisioned in the pioneering work on stress carried out by Cannon [1929, 1942] and Selye [1956]) an evolved domain-independent mechanism regulates human behavior independently of historical and regional contexts (and produces cultural variation in response to historical and regional variation), we should find that people of different ethnicities who live in contrasting historical or regional contexts agree about what constitutes traumatic/violent and supportive/affectionate events. Handwerker (1997, 1999b) and Fuentes (2001) show that White, West Indian, Latino, and Native Americans, as well as natives living as hunters and gatherers in the Russian and American Arctic and people making a living on tourist islands in the West Indies, concur on the properties of social interactions that constitute traumatic/violent and supportive/affectionate events, irrespective of age and class. Third, if this evolved domain-independent mechanism regulates behavioral responses to variation in the balance of power in social relationships, we should find, as demonstrated in a number of studies (Handwerker 1993a, 1996, 1998, 2001), that power inequalities between partners (for example where women have little income, no significant income generating skills, and few or no relatives or friends to help them) elicit violence toward women and their children; conversely, power equalities between partners elicit affectionate and supportive behavior for women and their children, irrespective of class, education, or the presence of stepfathers in the home. Fourth, because women can use their sexuality and childbearing capacity as a means to empower themselves in childhood environments marked by exploitation and trauma, we should find also that variation in sexual cultures corresponds with variation in a woman’s experience with traumatic/violent and supportive/affectionate cultural environments. For example, as documented previously by the author (Handwerker 1993a), women in Barbados who grew up in households marked by affection and support began sexual activity relatively late, had relatively few partners and few or no sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), experienced good relationships with their current partner, and were subject to little sexual or gender-based harassment later in life. Barbadian women who grew up in households marked by gender inequalities, by contrast, experienced sexual, physical, and emotional violence towards women and children. This exploitative childhood environment corresponded with an early start to sexual activity with much older first partners and, in adolescence, high levels of childbearing as well as a pattern of high sexual mobility which continued through their early 30s. These women’s activities corresponded with a self-perception of "promiscuity," high levels of emotional and physical abuse by their partners and sexual harassment by others, a view of sexuality that declared some activities as respectable and some not, men who demanded specialized sexual services and women who chose to meet this demand, and men who did not use condoms and who spread STDs. The present paper tests a fifth implication: If this evolved, selective mechanism produces changes in behavior in the presence of significant changes in the resource access opportunities available in a specific cultural environment, we should find that (1) the behavioral changes optimize or improve resource access in that new environment, and (2) women who grew up in exploitative Stress, Ecological Contingency, and Sexual Behavior 5 environments should make more dramatic behavioral changes. In the present case, a shift from an economy based on agriculture to one based on tourism created a natural experiment in which women should change their behavior in response to historical changes in their resource access opportunities. Findings reported below show that, between 1950 and the mid 1960s, Antiguan women had few job opportunities. In that historical context, it did not pay to go far in school; it did pay to have many babies early in life. Nevertheless, Antiguan women who grew up in affectionate and supportive environments initiated sexual activity at relatively late ages, had relatively few sexual partners during adolescence, averaged 11 (working class) or 12 (middle or upper class) years of schooling, and bore one child by age 20. By contrast, Antiguan women who grew up in violent and traumatic environments initiated (or were forced into) sexual activity at early ages, had relatively large numbers of sexual partners during adolescence, averaged six (working class) or ten (middle or upper class home) years of schooling, and bore two children by age 20. After the mid 1960s, women experienced a dramatic increase in job opportunities, but these were available only to those who completed a secondary or college education. It now paid to stay in school and have few or no babies early in life. Once significant job opportunities for women became available, Antiguan women who grew up in affectionate and supportive environments experienced sexual histories equivalent to those of the generation that preceded them. But in this new environment, they averaged 12 (working class) or 13 (middle or upper class) years of schooling, and no births by age 20. Antiguan women who grew up in violent and traumatic environments, like the generation that preceded them, initiated (or were forced into) sexual activity at early ages, and had relatively large numbers of sexual partners during adolescence. In sharp contrast to the preceding generation, however, they averaged 15 years of schooling (no class differences) and they bore no children by age 20. I organize this paper into four further sections. Environmental components and configurations vary regionally and change historically. The following section thus consists of descriptive ethnography to make clear how, why, and in which historical period specific components and configurations contributed or did not contribute to exploitative childhood environments. Next, the Methods sections describes the study population, the means by which I collected and analyzed data, and the research constructs themselves. The Findings section presents the results of tests that explore how, over the course of adolescent development, girls responded to their experiences in nonexploitative and exploitative environments, controlling for sociological and evolutionary psychology predictors. I conclude with a discussion about the implications of these findings for conceptualizations of child development. HISTORICAL CHANGE IN THE CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT The present study focused on profound generational changes documented elsewhere (Handwerker 1993b) to examine patterns of gender inequality, family violence, and sexuality in two adjacent generations: (1) the current younger generation of men and women who grew to maturity after 1965 as tourism came to dominate the national economy, and (2) the older generation of their parents who grew to maturity and lived most of their lives prior to 1965 when agriculture dominated the economy. Prior to this structural change in Antigua’s economy, gender relations were predicated on women's dependence on men and their children for access to resources (see Handwerker 1993b for greater historical and ethnographic detail). A small number of employers controlled the private sector, so they were not subject to significant levels of competition. Consistent employment and advancement opportunities, especially prestigious civil service or bank positions, were conditional on personal contacts and personal recommendations. These, in turn, were conditional on sex, class, and color. In this sharply stratified and largely lower class society, women constituted an underclass. Stress, Ecological Contingency, and Sexual Behavior 6 Men's choices during this period dictated the opportunities available for their partners and daughters. Women's job opportunities consisted almost solely of menial employment at wages much lower than men's. Some women became teachers, nurses, or clerks. Most worked as domestic servants, seamstresses, petty traders, road gang workers, or laborers in the sugar or cotton fields. Parents expected sons to support themselves by the time they were in their late teens or early 20s. Lower class families, especially, expected sons to contribute to the family income. By contrast, parents hoped that someone would marry their daughter so they no longer had to feed, house, and clothe her. Women looked for a good man who would marry them legally. Women from middle and upper middle class homes almost always married, as did many women from lower class homes. Even stable relationships required a woman's subservience, however, for men controlled women's opportunities. For example, legal marriage was a particularly important means to improve women's material welfare and that of their children. It legitimized the inheritance rights of a woman and her children, made it possible for her children to take advantage of educational and occupational opportunities that were closed to children born to couples who were not married, and enabled her to pursue middle class career ladders (nursing, teaching) that were unavailable to unmarried women who became pregnant. Marriage gave men rewards, too. But it was their choice to marry, not women's. Also, marriage rarely constrained men's freedom. Women often traded one form of servitude for another when they married. As adults, men of all classes spent little time at home. They rose early, left for work, returned in the evening to wash and clean up, eat dinner, discipline the children if it was appropriate, and left again to spend time with friends. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that men did not exert sweeping control over household affairs merely because they were not active, daily participants in those affairs. Women catered to men and their preferences. It was a man's prerogative to mete out physical or emotional violence when his partner did not meet his wishes---for example, if a woman had had a long, difficult day and was late getting dinner ready, or if the wind wasn't blowing in the right direction and the coal pot was slow to cook, or if she asked where he had been all night. One woman commented: “Some men acted as if they wanted a slave or something." Wives and girlfriends had little recourse, other than to find shelter in the home of a female friend or relative. Women without sexual partners did not have these constraints, of course. But they were also likely to be poor. One of two principal exceptions was women from the middle and upper middle classes who had not found suitable partners from among the men of their own social class and who had independent employment---and support from their families. The other was middle-aged and older women who had sons to support them (see Handwerker 1989b, Jones 1994). Women actively worked to escape the dependence on men they experienced during their youth by drilling into their children not only how much they sacrificed and how hard they worked to raise them properly, but also that their labors were that much worse because they had no companion to help them (cf. Sangrestano 1992). It was easy to explain family hardships. Men were irresponsible and abusive. Understandably, grown children usually interpreted their obligations to help their parents as obligations to help their mother. Antiguan women thus found that childbearing was a singularly effective way to secure their future material welfare and to establish the relatively permanent ties to men that improved their immediate material welfare (see Ehlers 1991, Browner and Lewin 1982). Bearing children was essential for receiving help from men during a woman's youth. In middle age, grown children who supported their mother provided a means to escape dependence on unsatisfying relationships with men. Later, remittances from children made the difference between abject poverty and a reasonable, or even a comfortable old age. Because men could expect support from their children primarily if they had maintained a relationship with the children's mother, the women dependent on men in their youth often found men dependent on them as they grew older. Stress, Ecological Contingency, and Sexual Behavior 7 In Antigua, boys grew into men who could respond to exploitative relationships with violence, or by establishing independent households. Women rarely found violence an effective way to respond to the exercise of power by men, unless the men were small, disabled, or very old. Beginning sexual activity early, however, may have created a means to escape exploitative relationships with men within households, and it provided access to resources not otherwise available. High sexual mobility created alternative channels to resources -money and gifts from men (including help with homework, better grades) -whether a woman took multiple sexual partners sequentially or, as some women did, simultaneously (see Prior 1993, Moses 1991). Young women were rarely able to establish independent households, a pattern that has become common on Antigua only within the last decade or two. Opportunities for women to escape dependence on men and on childbearing increased dramatically after the mid 1960s as the Antiguan economy shifted from an emphasis on agriculture to an emphasis on tourism. However, most new job opportunities required high levels of educational and technical skills. The expansion of employment opportunities drew women into school and pushed them further than they would have gone otherwise (Handwerker 1993b). Women used their education to take advantage of the new employment opportunities in increasing numbers. Since the mid 1960s, increasing numbers of Antiguan women have looked at childbearing as a consumption rather than an investment activity. Women who grew up in the 1950s spoke about children as "insurance policies" or "pension plans." They made comments about childbearing alternatives like: “There were no opportunities back then.” A woman aged 48 pointed out that when she was young, women did not think of having a career. Women thought about children. Women found a man, stopped going to school, and bore children. Before about 1965, Antiguan women did not choose a large family over education or a career: the choice could not be made because it did not exist. Women who grew up in the 1970s, by contrast, spoke about their children with a great deal of love. But as a young woman pointed out, women now feel they have a contribution to make beyond being mothers. They may have children. But they don't have many. And they rarely sacrifice their careers to do so.