Why do women sympathise with Lindsay Clancy?

The role of evolutionary mismatch

Written by Rosemary Hopcroft.

The recent furor around Lindsay Clancy, the deadlocked jury and the issue of postpartum depression represents a cultural moment in the US. There has been a deluge of support for Clancy from other women. Hundreds waited outside the courthouse where she was on trial. And many have posted sympathetic videos depicting the demands of caring for babies and their own reactions to such demands, which range from anger and withdrawal to more troubling behavior. What explains this extraordinary outpouring of support?

The simplest explanation is that many women recognize some of their own experience in Clancy’s situation. Babies are extremely demanding, and postpartum depression is real and not at all uncommon. Rarely does it progress to the killing of one’s own children, as may have happened in the Clancy case, but it certainly can. The key point is that caring for infants places a psychological burden on mothers.

My research suggests that this burden is particularly pronounced in developed, gender-egalitarian societies—that is, societies where women’s rights, longevity, literacy, education and earned income are similar to men’s. In fact, motherhood and childcare seem to have a more negative association with women’s mental health in these societies than in less developed societies, despite the myriad advantages that developed societies provide for mothers and their children.

Women in all societies are more likely than men to experience depression, regardless of whether they have children. There is also evidence that the sex difference in depression is wider in gender egalitarian societies than in other societies.

For example, Dana Bradley and I looked at 29 countries and found that the sex difference in reported depressive symptoms was larger in those that were more developed and gender egalitarian. This was true even though overall levels of depressive symptoms were higher in societies with less gender equality. In other words, societal development is associated with better mental health for all, but is associated with greater improvements in men’s mental health. More recent meta-analyses find larger sex differences in diagnoses of depression in countries with greater gender equality, although not in depressive symptoms.

One reason for the larger sex gap in depression in gender egalitarian societies is that having children offers some protection from depression for women in societies with less gender equality, while the opposite is true in gender egalitarian societies. Julie McLaughlin and I found that, among non-working women in societies with less gender equality, number of children was associated with a lower risk of depression. Yet among women in gender egalitarian societies, number of children was associated with a higher risk of depression. We did not find the same pattern among men.

My interpretation of these findings centres on the concept of evolutionary mismatch. This means a discrepancy between women’s evolved psychology, which was shaped in the social environments of ancestral foraging societies, and the social environment in which most mothers find themselves today.

During our evolutionary history, young mothers would rarely have found themselves alone and isolated with a demanding infant to care for. As Sarah Hrdy emphasized in her magisterial work Mother Nature, they were almost certainly embedded in extensive networks of kin and community. Other people helped them look after their infants. In moments of stress, there was always another pair of hands available—an older sibling, grandmother, aunt, uncle or other member of the community—who could watch the baby. Maternal psychology is likely adapted, at least in part, to this kind of social environment.

Modern societies with less gender equality are obviously not identical to the foraging societies in which our ancestors lived. It is also true that they impose seom patriarchal constraints. Yet mothers in these societies are less likely to work outside the home, and are often surrounded by extended family members—including older children and other relatives—who can help with childcare. Plus, they may gain considerable social status from having children, particularly large numbers of children.

In developed societies, by contrast, mothers often do work outside of the home. In the US, about 68% of women with children under the age of 6 are in the labor force. Modern workplaces are not particularly child-friendly, and this can create what sociologists refer to as “work–family conflict.”

When women are at home with their children, they are more likely to be alone. Families tend to be small, so there is often no one to lend a helping hand. In many cases, there are few family members living nearby. Working women also have less time to cultivate the social networks that previous generations of mothers were able to rely on. And while having children may grant some individual women status, women do not typically gain social status from having large families, as they do in less developed societies.

In short, modern mothers face the demands of raising children without the social support and status that characterised the environments in which maternal psychology evolved. These circumstances make modern motherhood highly stressful.

This is not to deny the enormous advantages of modern societies. Maternal and infant mortality are dramatically lower. Meanwhile, women have unprecedented educational and economic opportunities. Yet improvements in material conditions do not necessarily translate into improvements in psychological well-being. Indeed, female happiness has declined in the US and a number of other countries. Evidence suggests the demands of parenting is part of the explanation.

An evolutionary mismatch perspective may help explain the outpouring of support for Lindsay Clancy. Many women recognize, however imperfectly, the experience of feeling overwhelmed by the demands of their children while being isolated from other adults—without much compensation in terms of higher social status. That recognition does not excuse or minimize Clancy’s actions. Rather, it helps explain why many women identify with her.

There is a broader lesson here. If modern motherhood places women in an environment that differs dramatically from the one in which maternal psychology evolved, then improving women’s mental health may require rebuilding the supports that have been lost—facilitating greater involvement of extended family, fostering stronger community networks, and making workplaces compatible with raising children. This does not necessarily require state intervention. Many religious groups have managed to create favorable conditions for mothers and their children.

Improving women’s mental health could also promote family formation and fertility. If women are less isolated and better supported, having children may become a more attractive proposition. In that sense, evolutionary mismatch is relevant not only to the mental-health challenges faced by contemporary mothers, but also to the problem of declining global fertility.

Rosemary Hopcroft is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She is interested in applying evolutionary theory to sociological issues, as well as comparative and historical sociology.

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