A recent report suggests that women's social networks positively affect her child's cognitive development, says Dr John Shaver from the University of Otago.

The analysis also suggests that religious women have stronger support networks.

Shaver says that previous studies have found that sibling number is negatively related to a child's cognitive and physiological development.

It is also negatively related to a child's socioeconomic success in adulthood.

This happens because parents have less time, and fewer resources to invest in their development.

"The expectation, based on these findings, would be that due to differences in family sizes, children born to religious parents would exhibit poorer developmental outcomes than children born to secular parents," Shaver says.

The report's authors tested the hypothesis that religious cooperation extends to alloparenting (investment in children by people other than the child's parents), that higher levels of social support for religious mothers were associated with their fertility and their children's development.

Shaver says while the findings only support some hypotheses, they were mostly consistent with the idea that religions in modern environments support cooperative breeding strategies.

Women who receive help from members of their congregation have higher fertility, and this aid, as well as more general forms of social support, were both associated with improved child cognitive development.

"By positively influencing social support, religion in the UK may help some women have more children, without sacrificing the success of these children."

Shaver is the lead author of the report Church attendance and alloparenting: An analysis of fertility, social support, and child development among English mothers, published this month in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, the world's oldest English language journal.

Source

• otago.ac.nz
• newstalkzb.co.nz
• voxy.co.nz
• Image: teara.govt.nz

They "are always passing by but never enter the church in a fully communal way" Francis told those at his weekly general audience.

Saying these Christians are like tourists visiting catacombs (ie burial places), Francis added:

"A life based only on profiting and taking advantage of situations to the detriment of others inevitably causes inner death.

"And how many people say they are close to the church, friends of priests and bishops yet only seek their own interests. These are the hypocrisies that destroy the church."

His homily took an unexpected turn when a girl walked up the steps towards him.

Francis told his security staff to "let her be. God speaks" through children and reflected on the girl - who seemed oblivious to the occasion - saying she is "a victim of an illness and doesn't know what she is doing.

"I ask one thing, but everyone should respond in their heart: ‘Did I pray for her; looking at her, did I pray so that the Lord would heal her, would protect her?

"Did I pray for her parents and for family?

"When we see any person suffering, we must always pray. This situation helps us to ask this question:

‘Did I pray for this person that I have seen, (this person) that is suffering?'" he asked.

"Hypocrisy is the worst enemy of this Christian community, of this Christian love: that way of pretending to love one another but only seeking one's own interest," he said.

If we fail in the sincerity of sharing or ... love means to cultivate hypocrisy, to distance oneself from the truth, to become selfish, to extinguish the fire of communion and to destine oneself to the chill of inner death."

While prayer and the Eucharist unite believers "in one heart and one soul," Francis said sharing goods ... ‘koinonia,' or communion, ... establishes a bond between brothers and sisters ... makes believers responsible for one another.

"...To fail in the sincerity of sharing or to fail in the sincerity of love means to cultivate hypocrisy, to distance oneself from the truth, to become selfish, to extinguish the fire of communion and to destine oneself to the chill of inner death."

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Crux Now
• Image: Zenit