In a blog post riffing off of their article with lab alum Eric Hubbard in Evolution & Human Behavior, Ollie and Anne write that chosen kin – non-kin, to evolutionary scientists – are often central to human social networks and to cooperative childrearing, though they’re understudied. Though godparents don’t have measurable impacts on educational attainment in rural Bolivia, as Eric, Ollie, and Anne predicted in the paper, they do play other key roles. Ollie and Anne close by suggesting that studying chosen kin helps “honor the resilience and diversity of human social bonds.”