Abstract
Recent studies in social endocrinology have explored the effects of social relationships on female reproductive steroid hormones—estradiol and progesterone—investigating whether they are suppressed in partnered and parous women. Results have been mixed for these hormones although evidence is more consistent that partnered women and women with young children have lower levels of testosterone. These studies were sequential to earlier research on men, based on Wingfield’s Challenge Hypothesis, which showed that men in committed relationships, or with young children, have lower levels of testosterone than unpartnered men or men with older or no children. The study described here explored associations between estradiol and progesterone with partnership and parity among women from two different ethnicities: South Asian and white British. We hypothesized that both steroid hormones would be lower among partnered and/or parous women with children ≤3 years old, regardless of ethnicity. In this study we analyzed data from 320 Bangladeshi and British women of European origin aged 18 to 50 who participated in two previous studies of reproductive ecology and health. Levels of estradiol and progesterone were assayed using saliva and/or serum samples and the body mass index calculated from anthropometric data. Questionnaires provided other covariates. Multiple linear regressions were used to analyze the data. The hypotheses were not supported. We argue here that, unlike links between testosterone and male social relationships, theoretical foundations for such relationships with female reproductive steroid hormones are lacking, especially given the primary role of these steroids in regulating female reproductive function. Further longitudinal studies are needed to explore the bases of independent relationships between social factors and female reproductive steroid hormones.
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Acknowledgements
We thank all the women who participated in and assisted with these studies.
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This work was supported by a postgraduate scholarship from CONACyT, Mexico (ANM), a Commonwealth Scholarship (TS), Durham University (the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing, and the Institute for Advanced Study), the National Science Foundation, USA (Grant #. 0548393), and the Royal Society, UK (UF951006 to GRB).
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GB: Conceptualization, methodology, validation, data curation, writing—original draft, review, and editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. AN: Investigation, data curation, writing—review and editing, visualization, funding acquisition. MF: Conceptualization, writing—review and editing. KB: Investigation, data curation, writing—review and editing. SM: Resources, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. TS: Investigation, data curation, writing—review and editing. LM: Investigation, data curation, writing—review and editing. RTC: Investigation, supervision—review and editing. OC: Writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration. RG: Validation, investigation, writing—review and editing. LLS: Conceptualization, methodology, validation, data curation, writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.
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For the first sample involving saliva samples, ethical approval was granted by the Ethics Committees of University College London Hospital, East London and the City Local Health Authority, Camden and Islington Local Health Authority, and Sylhet M.A.G Osmani Medical College (Núñez-de la Mora et al., 2007a, 2008). For the second sample involving plasma E2, ethical approval was granted by the Institutional Review Board for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the Ethics Committees of University College London, the Department of Anthropology, Durham University, and Sylhet M.A.G. Osmani Medical College. For both sets of samples, all participants provided written informed consent prior to participation, and data storage complied with the Data Protection Act in effect at that time in the UK (Begum et al., 2016; Núñez-de la Mora et al., 2007a, 2008).
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Bentley, G.R., Núñez-de la Mora, A., Freed, M.C. et al. Relationship of Estradiol and Progesterone with Partnership and Parity Among Bangladeshi and British Women of European Origin. Hum Nat 34, 1–24 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-023-09442-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-023-09442-6